Sky price rises from December 2015

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.

Customers are due to receive an email from Sky outlining how the changes will impact them.
Customers who signed up before 1 September 2014 who are still within their minimum contract period will be hit with the price rise once their minimum contract ends.

Sky’s price rise follows BT, Plusnet and TalkTalk in what is becoming a regular annual increase above inflation price rises between the major operators.