"Around 10 million BT customers are being told that phone and broadband prices are to rise by up to 6.5% in another blow to households struggling with soaring utility bills.

BT is hiking its prices from January 4, but denied the move was linked to its push into sports broadcasting.

The increases follow the group cutting the price of broadband to £10 for copper and £15 for fibre, and giving away BT Sport for "free" with broadband.
Line rental will go up by 54p, or 3.5%, a month to £15.99, and other prices such as set-up fees and price-per-minute rates will increase by around 6%.
The main calls packages BT sells now will remain the same price but existing customers on older tariffs will see a rise of around 6%.
The formerly free BT Answer 1571 and BT Privacy with Caller Display will cost £1.75 a month.
Broadband prices will increase by up to 6.5%, although the current broadband offers will remain at the same price including broadband and weekend calls for £10 and Infinity and weekend calls for £15.
Mobile calls will be unaffected."

http://www.itv.com/news/update/2013-09-27/prices-set-to-rise-for-bt-customers/

bigjohn wrote on Sep 27^th, 2013 at 7:15pm:


So when I get the letter, what do I have to do?  Do I just phone them and give a month's notice, or would the service expire when the next monthly payment is due?

I have BT line rental paid in advance (due for renewal in November) and BT 40Mgb Broadband on special offer of £10pm (due for renewal in June), plus BT Sport HD.

I'm certainly not paying for caller display and won't miss BT Sport (I only watch the one footy match a week). Both Sky and Talk Talk have attractive looking packages, as does Plusnet.

bigjohn wrote on Sep 28^th, 2013 at 1:56am:

This would presumably depend on whether they are separate contracts. If they are then this is a steaky way of getting customers not to leave their phone service under the "detriment" clause, or else effectively incur a penalty for doing so.

I wouldn't think that voice phone and broadband are separate as they are invariably sold as single packages these days.

I know that Line Rental Saver is a separate 12-month contract to the rest of the service. Line Rental Saver is where you pay 12 months' worth of line rental upfront in one go and incurs a lower "per month" charge than paying it monthly or quarterly.

Where the two don't run concurrently then there might be issue where one incurs a penalty (or effectively incurs a penalty such as in the forfeiting of a portion of the line rental paid in one lump sum under the Line Rental Saver scheme).

The poster says his Telephone Contract ends before his broadband one.

" I have BT line rental paid in advance (due for renewal in November) and BT 40Mgb Broadband on special offer of £10pm (due for renewal in June), plus BT Sport HD."

Hence my observation,and my advice to check this out with BT.

I have seen a number of cases in the past where BT have taken the view i suggested.

Yes so he has nothing much to lose on that so he could if he wanted  cancel telephony now. But he is still in contract with Broadband and BT have not increased that.So best to check with BT and see what they say.

More worrying IMHO, is the that, from today, Ofcom have removed the requirement for BT to allow the use of Carrier PreSelect (CPS) and Indirect Access (IA) providers (like 1899, 18866 and 18185).

http://stakeholders.ofcom.org.uk/consultations/nmr-13/statement/statement-summar...

sherbert wrote on Sep 30^th, 2013 at 6:05pm:


Yes they are but the poster said he was was on a special fixed offer.

The BT link given by SCV  refers to phones,there are also increases across the board to broadband and BT Vision.

This page has more full details,

https://www.bt.com/static/wa/account/pricechanges/login/login.html
but you have to enter your account and phone number to see your broadband price rise: