August 2024 Technology Fixed Wire Telecoms Price increase information
Due to various external factors and rising operational costs, there will be an increase in your monthly broadband/call service charges effective 1st August 2024. This adjustment reflects our commitment to maintaining the high standards of service you expect from us and our funding commitment to our community ecosystem. We value your continued loyalty and trust in UBT and assure you that we remain dedicated to providing exceptional value and reliability in your internet connectivity.
This is the first price increase since we started doing landline products in 2010. While the major providers consistantly increased their prices by 3-4% every year, due to very low inflation and better purchasing we were able to keep our prices constant. However, this all changed in 2022-23 when we saw large increases in our wholesale costs due to the high inflation and the large increases in the cost of electricity.
Over the past 2 years we have seen wholesale price rises of up to 25% across most of our products. In addition to this, due to the Openreach PSTN Switch Off program, we have seen our wholesale prices on traditional landline products increase by around 55%,
Most ISPs including BT retail and Virgin have implemented large increases over the past couple of years, (around 14% in 2023 and 7% in 2024). Unfortunately, we are now being forced to pass on the increases in our costs.
Most of our products will see an RPI (retail price index) increase of 9.8%, however, in some cases, we are being forced to implement larger increases.
The Legacy PSTN/ISDN Products (Traditional phone lines) will adopt new pricing to bring them into line with our current costs, in most cases, customers will save considerably by upgrading to one of our new digital products
We will honour our promise not to increase the price of our domestic broadband products while they are still in contract, once the contract comes to an end we will move the product to our current price plan
Domestic Products - Key changes
Legacy Products - typically applies to PSTN & Broadband services that were supplied before June2022. These products will adopt new legacy pricing plans, check our conversion sheet to see what the new charges will be.
In many cases calling packages were included within the broadband service, these will now be charged separately to the broadband service.
We recommend that you upgrade your service to a new broadband and digital Voice service to take advantage of improved pricing plans
DP2022 plans – Customers that upgraded to the new broadband and digital voice service in 2022 - Prices will remain fixed until your contract ends at which point the service will adopt the current 2024 prices, there may be a benefit in resigning your service to benefit from improved rates
WRG0323 plans – Customers that upgraded to the new broadband and digital voice service in 2022 - Prices will remain fixed until your contract ends at which point the service will apopt the current 2024 prices, there may be a benefit in resigning your service to benefit from improved rates
Business Products - Key Changes
New prices will be applied to most business products, Legacy PSTN/ISDN pricing will see increases as per the new price list
- Leased line services within contract will see a 9.8% RPI increase
- Leased line services out of contract will see a 20% increase, in most cases costs can be reduced and/or speeds increased by resigning into a new contract.
- SIP Trunk Services will see a 9.8% RPI price increase
- Most 3CX phone system rental costs will remain as the same price for the time being, however, the Standard and Free Licenses have been discontinued by 3CX so customers will be moved to the nearest Professional License
- New Pricing has been introduced for customers that use our NGN / SIP number call forwarding service where no sip trunk is provided.
- First number £6/month
- Additional numbers £0.75/month