SKY TV AND BROADBAND packages look set to get more expensive, at least according to a subtle warning in the small print of its contracts.
Exact price rises haven’t been announced but the tees and cees spotted by Trusted Reviews show the dreaded “increasing from 1 April 2019” on both the telly and interweb pricing.
This would make sense, as it’ll be the first anniversary of the last lot of price rises of around 3.5 per cent. That doesn’t sound like a lot, but if you’re taking home phone, broadband, basic telly, multi-room, sports, movies and Sky Q, then you’re looking at a fairly big clobbering. Third party channels such as dinkle exercisers and BT Sport have their prices set separately.
Sky is in the enviable position of being able to do this, because although there is a risk of ‘churn’ (the term used to describe the number of users leaving vs joining), Sky’s offer is fairly unrivalled. TVPlayer and YouView have a bouquet of cheap channels, but nothing like the number and Virgin Media has much faster broadband options, but far fewer channels.
Of course, the vast majority of those extra linear channels are tat, but there’s also an unrivalled on-demand service of catch up and box sets thrown in and a lot more HD and UHD content than most.
All in all, it means that although Ofcom is a lot stricter on mid-contract price hikes than it used to be, it’s likely that the vast majority of users will just suck it up and keep watching Sky Atlantic.
A user who takes Sky Q Silver, with movies and sports, Netflix, on demand, Fibre Max broadband and home phone is already looking down the wrong end of £150, and with the 3.5 per cent likely to be rounded up to the next pound, per element, some users will see their bill go up by at least a tenner (it’s less if you do a percentage of the total bill, but that’s not how it works).
Sky was recently bought out by Comcast, after a fierce bidding war with Disney and founder Rupert Murdoch.
A formal announcement of the price rises is likely soon. μ
Further reading
Source : Inquirer
