BT broadband and phone call prices to rise

BT customers will pay more for phone calls, broadband service, line connections and some TV content from January, after the company revealed several price rises.

The British telecoms incumbent has been gradually letting customers know about the new pricing since the end of last week.

"From 5 January, 2013, we're changing some of our Voice, Broadband and Vision prices. We'll be telling everyone from 1 September via BT Update magazine," BT said in a post on its customer help pages.

"We've kept changes to 5.9 percent or less for Voice and Broadband, and we will freeze prices on monthly line rental, UK landline calls, BT Broadband, BT Infinity, Vision Essential, and the Unlimited Anytime Plan from 5 January, 2013 until 2014 at the earliest," it added.

Anyone unhappy with the price hikes can cancel the service without a penalty, if they do it within 10 days of being told about the rises, BT said.

Price hikes

Broadband customers on options 1, 2 or 3 will see the cost of their package increase by between £1.05 and £1.55 per month. Those on BT's fibre-based Infinity broadband will pay an extra £1.20 (Infinity Option One) or £1.55 (Infinity Option Two), making the monthly rental £22.20 and £28.35 respectively.

By comparison, Sky's Fibre Unlimited package (which uses BT's fibre infrastructure) costs £20 per month, but requires phone line rental at £14.50 per month.

For BT's phone customers, line rental is going up from £14.60 to £15.45, while the out-of-package call connection fee will rise from 13.1p to 13.87p. Calls themselves will be more expensive, costing 8.41 pence per minute (up from 7.95p) in the daytime and 1.11p per minute (up from 1.05p) in the evening. Unlimited Anytime, Unlimited Evening and Weekend plans will see an increase of 30p per month.

TV (Vision) customers will see rates hiked for certain channels and packages. For example, those with either Sky Sports 1 or Sky Sports 2 on a 12- or 18-month contract will see monthly charges go from £12.90 to £15, a rise of about 16 percent. Those on a 24-month deal will pay £10, as opposed to £7.20 — a change of almost 39 percent. Some other channels and packages are set to rise by up to £2.70 per month.

Early contract cancellation charges are also increasing across the board for phone and broadband packages, and will see an increase of up to 35 percent (the latter example in the case of the phone Evenings and Weekends package). Customers wishing to cancel that package will have to pay £5.75 per month for the remainder of the contract.