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[Bowdon]

https://www.ispreview.co.uk/index.php/2018/08/virgin-media-uk-confirms-incoming-annual-price-hikes-for-2018.html

Cable broadband ISP and TV operator Virgin Media has today become the latest provider to confirm that customers will soon be hit by an annual price increase on their bills between October and November 2018, although they claim that the average rise is a little “lower than last year” (i.e. 4.5% in 2018 against 4.7% in 2017).

Customers can expect to receive a notification about the latest increase starting from tomorrow. Overall it’s stated that prices for a “significant majority” of customers will increase between £2.00 and £4.00 per month (the average increase is £2.20 +vat).

However the operator is keen to stress that these changes, which will affect their fixed line broadband, phone and TV subscribers, “have nothing to do with the recent agreement we have reached with UKTV to restore its channels“. Virgin stated that their decision forms part of a complex process that pre-dates the recent UKTV discussions.

As usual the reasons for such increases tend to vary, although it’s often a combination of inflation, rapidly rising data usage by end-users, network / content upgrades and the fact that big ISPs also have to adopt a lot of new measures as part of changing regulation (e.g. automatic compensation for broadband faults, internet snooping laws etc.).

    A Virgin Media Spokesperson told ISPreview.co.uk:

    “Increasing prices is not a decision which we take lightly. We work hard to keep our prices competitive while continuing to invest in our network and improve the services we offer our customers.

    This year’s price increase is lower than last year while broadband usage on our network has increased by almost 40% in that time, with approximately 60% of total traffic now due to more streaming of video. At the same time the impact on us of a 300% increase in business rates on broadband networks has started to take effect, hiking up the costs associated with building and running our network.

    Over the past year we’ve invested around a billion pounds in our network and upgraded many of our customers to faster broadband while introducing a new top speed of 362Mbps – the fastest widely-available speed in the market.

    Our significant investment continues to bring real benefits to Virgin Media customers – under new rules introduced this year to bring greater transparency to broadband advertising we were the only major provider to see our advertised speeds increase. On top of speed improvements we’ve also accelerated the rollout of our latest technology such as the popular V6 TV box and Hub 3.0 router to millions of our customers.

    Giving our customers an amazing service with the best connectivity, great programming – from exclusive entertainment to 4K UHD sport – and innovative new upgrades is something we’re committed to – and we’ll be delivering even more of this during the coming year.”