For years, UK broadband contracts contained a clause most people never read and nobody could price: your bill would rise each April by inflation plus a few percentage points. You signed a two-year deal without knowing what it would cost in year two, because the number did not exist yet.
Ofcom ended that for new contracts. Since 17 January 2025, providers selling to consumers must state any in-contract price rise in pounds and pence, upfront, before you sign. A percentage tied to a future inflation figure is no longer good enough.
This is one of the more consequential consumer changes in UK telecoms in a decade, and it is still poorly understood — partly because it does not apply to everyone at once.
What the rule actually requires
If a contract allows the provider to raise your price during the minimum term, the provider must tell you at the point of sale:
- the exact amount of the increase, in pounds and pence
- when it will happen
“CPI plus 3.9% each April” is not compliant for a new consumer contract. “£3 a month from April 2027” is.
The rule does not ban increases. It bans unknowable ones. A provider can still raise your price mid-contract; you just have to be able to see the number before you commit, and add it up yourself.
What it means in practice
Deals are comparable again. Previously two contracts at the same monthly price could diverge substantially in year two depending on each provider’s uplift formula. Now the increase is a stated figure you can include in your own arithmetic.
Flat-rate rises hit cheap deals hardest. This is the part that surprises people. A fixed £3 monthly increase is a 15% rise on a £20 tariff and a 6% rise on a £50 one. Inflation-linked percentages were at least proportionate. Fixed amounts are regressive — the cheaper your package, the larger the proportional hit.
If you are choosing between a £22 deal that rises £3 and a £26 deal that is fixed for the term, the gap in year two is smaller than it looks in year one.
Some providers now advertise no in-contract rises at all. Several altnets and smaller ISPs use “fixed price for the whole contract” as a selling point, and a number of the deals on this site say exactly that. Where a provider commits to it, that is worth real money over 24 months and is genuinely simpler to compare.
If you signed before January 2025
The old rules may still apply to your contract. Inflation-linked clauses in existing agreements were not retrospectively voided.
So if you are mid-way through a contract signed in 2023 or 2024, you may still be exposed to a CPI-linked April increase. Your contract terms — not the current rules — govern what happens to your price.
Worth knowing if you are wondering why your bill went up by an amount nobody quoted you.
Social tariffs are usually exempt
Most social tariffs are exempt from annual price rises entirely. This is one of the least-publicised advantages of being on one, and it compounds: over a two-year period, a household on an exempt social tariff can end up materially better off than the headline price difference suggests.
If you are eligible for a social tariff and have not looked at one, the exemption is a reason to look beyond the monthly saving.
When you can leave without paying
You have a right to exit penalty-free when a provider makes a change to your contract that is to your material detriment, and the provider must notify you and tell you about that right.
The critical distinction: a rise that was properly disclosed upfront is not a contract change. If you signed knowing the price would go up £3 in April 2027, April 2027 arriving is the contract working as agreed — no exit right.
The exit right bites when something changes that you were not told about at the point of sale. That includes:
- an increase larger than the one disclosed
- a change in terms you did not agree to
- an increase on a contract where none was disclosed at all
If you think that applies to you, the sequence is: complain to the provider in writing, get their final response or wait eight weeks, then escalate free of charge to whichever alternative dispute resolution scheme they belong to — CISAS or the Communications Ombudsman. Their decisions bind the provider.
What to do about it
Out of contract? You are almost certainly paying more than a new customer for the same service, and you can leave whenever you like with no penalty. This is the single largest saving available to most households, and it needs no negotiation — just a switch.
In contract, and the price just rose? Check whether the increase matches what you were told at sale. If it does, your options are to accept it or wait out the term. If it does not, you may have an exit right.
About to sign? Ask one question: “What will this cost me in month 13, and is that written down?” Under the current rules a provider selling to a consumer should be able to answer precisely. If they cannot, that tells you something.
Getting near the end of a term? Diarise the date. The gap between an in-contract price and an out-of-contract price is frequently larger than any switching saving you would chase otherwise.
How this site handles it
Every package we list records its mid-contract rise arrangement — none, a fixed annual amount, or unknown — and shows it on the row rather than burying it.
Where we do not know, we say “unknown” rather than implying there is no increase. That is the honest state of a lot of the market: the information is often not on the provider’s public pricing page, and inventing a reassuring answer would be worse than admitting the gap.
We also deliberately exclude rises from the headline cost figures. Folding a future increase into a “total cost” makes the number unverifiable — you could not check it against anything. It is disclosed as its own field instead, where you can see the term and do the arithmetic yourself.
Sources
- ofcom.org.uk — Ofcom — statement on inflation-linked mid-contract price rises, in force 17 January 2025
- ofcom.org.uk — Ofcom — General Conditions of Entitlement, contract modification and the right to exit
- cedr.com — CISAS alternative dispute resolution
- commsombudsman.org — Communications Ombudsman