Consultation: Prohibiting inflation-linked price rises
- Start: 12 December 2023
- Status: Closed
- End: 13 February 2024
This consultation sets out Ofcom’s plans for new consumer price protections in telecoms, including a ban on price increases linked to uncertain future inflation.
When people sign up to a phone, broadband or pay TV contract, they should be clear and certain about what they will have to pay throughout its duration. This hasn’t always happened, because a growing number of companies’ contract terms allow for an annual rise in in-contract customers’ payments, linked to future inflation plus an additional percentage, typically 3.9%.
We are concerned that inflation-linked price rise terms not only make it hard for people to find the best deal, but also make competition less effective. Further, they require customers to assume the risk and burden of financial uncertainty from inflation, with tangible impacts on their ability to manage costs.
We are proposing to ban telecoms companies from providing for both inflation-linked price rises and price rises that are set out in percentage terms in contracts. Instead, where companies’ contracts provide for any price rises during the contract period, companies must set this out up-front in pounds and pence.
Responding to this consultation
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