Sky is to increase the cost of its landline and other telecoms charges just five months after it increased the cost of watching its TV packages.
From 1 December Sky’s phone customers will see their line rental increase from £16.40 to £17.40 a month – a 6% increase.
The charge for Sky Talk’s 1571 service is being raised from £1 to £1.25 a month. It means customers will soon be paying £15 a year for the once free answerphone service.
The cost of making chargeable calls is also rising sharply, with both the connection charge and the per-minute call cost going up. This will see the cost of making a two-minute call using a Sky landline rise from 34.9p to 39.8p – a 14.3% increase.
The company has cut the per-minute cost of calling a mobile from its landline –down from 12.7p to 11.5p a minute – but the higher connection charge will still apply.
From 1 December Sky Talk is rationalising the number of calls packages it offers, and customers will be moved on to the nearest equivalent package from the remaining range. Many will “gain additional benefits such as inclusive calls to UK mobiles”, it said.
However, for bundled customers – those who take TV, home phone and broadband from the company – this latest increase adds to already rising bills. In June, Sky TV customers saw their bills rise by up to £54 a year after the provider raised the price of certain packages including Sky Sports and its Family bundle.
“Our line rental and voicemail prices are still lower than BT’s, and our new Sky Talk packs mean our customers will gain even more inclusive calls across the week – including to UK mobiles – for as little as £4 a month.
“These changes mean we can offer our broadband and talk customers even more value for money at the same time as investing in market-leading innovation and even better customer service for them,” a Sky spokeswoman says.
She added that customers who don’t want to continue using the more expensive voicemail can switch it off at any time.
Sky’s latest announcement comes hot on the heels of similar rises from its main competitors – BT, TalkTalk and Virgin – who have all made similar moves in recent weeks. Landline charges have seen the biggest increases, as the telecoms companies have sought to make up lost calls income. Customers don’t make many calls from landlines any more, preferring to use mobiles or web services like Skype instead.
Twice yearly, inflation-busting increases have also become the norm over the past two years. Providers appear to have decided that consumers will notice less if they split increases into smaller portions across specific areas such as broadband.
Guardian research recently found that UK telecoms customers not on a teaser or introductory deal are paying 25%-30% more for their service than they did four years ago – and as much as 50% more than standard prices in Europe.
