UK broadband customers face steep price rises at contract end

[Troopa]

nationalise all broadband!

[Output]

There should be a law in place requiring these companies too to advise you 2-4 weeks before your offer comes to and end or before you can cancel before that time (whichever is sooner (?)).

It turns out that Ofcom did recently announce the proposal of new rules that will give Phone, Broadband and TV customers alerts about when their contract ends.

https://www.moneysavingexpert.com/ne...ract-is-ending

EDIT: Oops, it's actually pointed out in the HEXUS article that Ofcom is considering it (although only mentioning Broadband).

[Axle_Grease]

Contracts with ISPs in the UK must mean something different compared to contracts in New Zealand. When a contract expires, it just means I am no longer bound to using a particular ISP and can choose to change providers without being charged a horrendous punishment fee. There has NEVER been a price rise. Why the hike in the UK? Is the government inflicting some general internet tax on users?

[spacein_vader]

Contracts with ISPs in the UK must mean something different compared to contracts in New Zealand. When a contract expires, it just means I am no longer bound to using a particular ISP and can choose to change providers without being charged a horrendous punishment fee. There has NEVER been a price rise. Why the hike in the UK? Is the government inflicting some general internet tax on users?

Your first point is exactly the case here, on the second it's nothing to do with the government.

The price rise is done through semantics. The price in your contract was always (plucking a figure out of the air,) £50 per month BUT to entice you in for the first 12 months they'll apply a £15 per month discount. The "price rise" is just the result of that discount no longer being applied.

Some of the really shady ones (Origin I'm looking at you,) give you a 12 month discount but an 18 month contract.

[Ttaskmaster]

nationalise all broadband!

I assume you're too young to remember when public services were nationalised... In other words, rather than being raped by horrendously overpriced services, you'd instead just get NO service, which will be supplied by overpaid lazy layabouts who are more concerned with which pub they'll go down this afternoon.

[frozen-monkey]

In other news snow is white and grass is green...this happens across pretty much every facet of subscription service industry so it's not really news is it. Insurance, broadcasting, mobiles, gas, electricity so why is this a surprise to anyone?

They greedily hope that they can get a month or two of you not switching and paying through the nose and it's guaranteed if you contact them to move away they can suddenly change the price to something more satisfactory for another year or two of locked in contract. This has helped with the rise of the crap comparison website industry rather as well so the only losers are the consumer and in the UK due to pretty much every regulator being as much use as a screen door on a submarine, there's no incentive for any industry to change.

[Ironbuket]

This story could easy be spun as ‘UK broadband customer enjoy reduced prices at contract start’. IMHO it is not really a news story at all.

As others have stated, this kind of thing is not isolated to broadband alone and similar marketing tactics are employed in other industries to attract customers. Anyone that doesn’t realise this is going on and is surprised when their fee goes up must be from Mars

[peterb]

nationalise all broadband!

I assume you're too young to remember when public services were nationalised... In other words, rather than being raped by horrendously overpriced services, you'd instead just get NO service, which will be supplied by overpaid lazy layabouts who are more concerned with which pub they'll go down this afternoon.

Ah yes, the good old days when the UK had electromechanical exchanges and puls dialling because although the GPO (as it was then) had developed electronic exchanges, they were deemed to expensive for anything but trunk exchanges. And of course we had party lines where two people shared the same line pair (( but a separate ringer line) so either party could hear the other's conversation.

And don't forget you could have any colour handset you liked as long as it was black and rented from he GPO because you couldn't connect your own.

To be fair, in the early days of telephony, rental was the way to go, and havng the system set up and run as a government department was probably a good thing to get things going, and it wasn't really until the late 1950/s early 1960s that telephone use became widespread - but by the 80's the system was creaking at the seams because of chronic underinvestment - typical of most nationalised industries at the time.

[phill8800GT]

Yet all the price hikes and still no performance increases for the majority of the people out there.. Such a shame It's a sad world we live in...

[peterb]

Yet all the price hikes and still no performance increases for the majority of the people out there.. Such a shame It's a sad world we live in...

Really? I'm paying about £30 for 50 Mb/s - 10 years ago I was paying about £15 for 7Mb/s - I could be paying less but that includes static IP addresses - so price has doubled (not allowing for inflation, but the sped has increased 7 times.

I may not be typical, but I suspect the majority of people have experienced real speed increases in the last 10 to 15 years.

[Corky34]

I may not be typical, but I suspect the majority of people have experienced real speed increases in the last 10 to 15 years.

Go back only a little further, 20 odd years, and the only thing available was 64k ISDN costing £150+ per month (along with astronomical installation costs) or POTS dial up, i remember spending in excess of £200 per month on phone calls alone, the stupid things we do when young.

[peterb]

Go back only a little further, 20 odd years, and the only thing available was 64k ISDN costing £150+ per month (along with astronomical installation costs) or POTS dial up, i remember spending in excess of £200 per month on phone calls alone, the stupid things we do when young.

Yes, I had ‘home highway’ which was an ISDN implementation - basic rental was the same (but as it was effectively two lines it was double normal rental) and yes, before that good old dial 9,600 baud modem!

[shaithis]

Lets not forget when BT rolled out ADSL (512Kb) it was £40 per month. It has essentially stayed the same price since release with the speed constantly improving.

In fact, its probably dropped a bit as line rental makes up more of the cost than it used to. That is the real killer price-wise at the moment IMO. So many people are paying £17 per month for a telephone line that they technically don't really use. The sooner this is completely uncoupled from broadband, the better. In the past it was always possible to have incoming calls only for a cheap price, that concept needs to come back in the form of a data-only line.

If BT aren't careful, mobile networks could kill off a major component of their business, at least for the majority domestic users and the constantly rising rental fee seems to be the main thing pushing people in that direction at the moment.

[spacein_vader]

Lets not forget when BT rolled out ADSL (512Kb) it was £40 per month. It has essentially stayed the same price since release with the speed constantly improving.

In fact, its probably dropped a bit as line rental makes up more of the cost than it used to. That is the real killer price-wise at the moment IMO. So many people are paying £17 per month for a telephone line that they technically don't really use. The sooner this is completely uncoupled from broadband, the better. In the past it was always possible to have incoming calls only for a cheap price, that concept needs to come back in the form of a data-only line.

If BT aren't careful, mobile networks could kill off a major component of their business, at least for the majority domestic users and the constantly rising rental fee seems to be the main thing pushing people in that direction at the moment.

Much as I hate to stick up for BT (more specifically Openreach in this case,) line rental for the maintenance of the line. That line costs the same to provide whether it carries data or voice.

[aidanjt]

Much as I hate to stick up for BT (more specifically Openreach in this case,) line rental for the maintenance of the line. That line costs the same to provide whether it carries data or voice.

What maintenance? The only real cost involved in the line itself is the 110Vac applied to it to power analogue phones, which is a constantly reducing load as analogue phones fall out of use. ADSL/VDSL and cordless phone terminations are self-powered DC devices. There's no great public works programme laying down shiny new copper to the home either, is there? All that stuff was laid down well before most of us were born, long before BT was sold off. And Virgin is well able to incorporate their marginal infrastructure costs into a flat fee for each service. Nope, BT is just milking their PSTN infrastructure monopoly for all its worth.

[peterb]

What maintenance? The only real cost involved in the line itself is the 110Vac applied to it to power analogue phones, which is a constantly reducing load as analogue phones fall out of use. ADSL/VDSL and cordless phone terminations are self-powered DC devices. There's no great public works programme laying down shiny new copper to the home either, is there? All that stuff was laid down well before most of us were born, long before BT was sold off. And Virgin is well able to incorporate their marginal infrastructure costs into a flat fee for each service. Nope, BT is just milking their PSTN infrastructure monopoly for all its worth.

But copper lines don't last for ever - and there is the rest of the infrastructure that needs maintaining - fibre isn't just fit and forget either, and as equipment becomes obsolete, it needs to be upgraded.