Ofcom’s Ban on Mid-Contract Price Rises: What to Check Before You Renew

Ofcom’s ban on inflation-linked mid-contract price rises took effect on 17 January 2025, and the regulator’s own rule is blunt: any price increase baked into a new phone, broadband or pay-TV contract must now be stated in pounds and pence at the point of sale, not dressed up as “CPI plus 3.9%”. I have watched Ofcom circle this problem for years while the major networks quietly rewrote their terms, and the 2025 ban is the first time the regulator has actually closed the door rather than asked operators nicely to behave. The catch, and it is a real one, is that the rule only protects contracts signed from January 2025 onwards. If you are still on an older deal, or about to renew without reading the small print, the old inflation maths can still bite.

What the ban on mid-contract price rises actually changed

For most of the past few years the industry’s favourite trick was to link your annual increase to a future inflation figure, usually January’s Consumer Prices Index or the older Retail Prices Index, and then add a few percentage points on top. The honest problem with that, as Ofcom set out when it confirmed the ban, is that nobody signing a 24-month contract in spring can tell you what CPI will read the following January. You were being asked to accept a price you could not calculate. Ofcom’s research, published alongside the decision, found that 55% of broadband customers and 58% of pay-monthly mobile customers did not know what CPI or RPI even measure. That is not an informed market; that is a guessing game with the risk loaded entirely onto the customer.

So from 17 January 2025 the percentage-and-inflation model is simply not allowed in new contracts. If a provider wants to raise your price mid-term, the increase has to be written in pounds and pence before you sign, shown prominently, with the timing spelled out. You should be able to read a single line that says, for example, your bill goes up by a fixed amount each April, and know exactly what you will pay in month 14 on the day you sign in month one. That is a meaningful shift in who carries the uncertainty, and it is the kind of structural fix I have argued the regulator should have reached for far sooner.

Crucially, this is a transparency rule, not a price cap. Ofcom did not tell anyone they cannot raise prices; it told them they cannot hide the figure behind an index. That distinction matters, because plenty of providers have responded by setting fixed pounds-and-pence rises that, in cash terms, still climb faster than headline inflation. The ban makes the increase legible. It does not make it small. Anyone hoping the new regime would automatically shrink their bill is reading it wrong, and I would rather say that plainly than let the headline do the comforting.

What the big networks did in response

The four major mobile networks have all moved to pounds-and-pence increases, and the detail is worth knowing before you renew. EE began showing flat-cash rises in new and upgrading contracts ahead of the deadline, and its mobile handset plans now carry a fixed annual rise quoted in pounds rather than a CPI formula, with SIM-only and airtime increases set lower. Vodafone publishes its own fixed figures, with pay-monthly airtime and home-broadband customers told the exact April uplift in cash when they sign. Three and O2 have likewise dropped the inflation-linked language from new deals. The point is not that any one network is the villain; it is that the cash figures now sit on the page where the percentages used to be, and they are not identical between providers.

This is exactly the moment to compare like with like. If you are weighing a phone upgrade, the monthly headline is no longer the whole story; the fixed annual rise is part of the lifetime cost, and it belongs in the same column as the upfront price. I have made this argument before in the context of the 2026 memory price squeeze pushing handset costs up, and it applies just as forcefully here. A plan that looks two pounds cheaper a month can quietly cost more over 24 months once the contractual rise is added. The networks have done what Ofcom required; the work of actually reading the figure has shifted to you.

There is also a hard limit to what the ban does, and it is the part most coverage skates over. The rules apply to new contracts from January 2025. If you signed before that date and are still inside your minimum term, your original CPI or RPI clause is still live and still enforceable. Ofcom did not retrospectively tear up existing contracts, and it could not have without a much bigger legal fight. So the household most exposed in 2026 is the one that signed a long deal in 2023 or 2024, never switched, and assumes the new rules cover them. They do not.

The ban made the price honest, not cheap. The customers it does not protect are the ones who signed before January 2025 and never went back to check.

What to check before you renew in 2026

Renewal season is where the theory meets your bank account, so here is the order I would work through. First, find the price-rise clause and confirm it is stated in pounds and pence, not a percentage or an index reference. If a new contract still quotes you a CPI or RPI formula, that is a red flag worth querying directly, because post-January-2025 deals should not contain one. Second, check the timing: most networks apply the rise each April, so a deal signed in summer may take the increase within months, not a year out. Third, and this is the one people forget, confirm whether you are actually out of your minimum term. Once you are out of contract you can switch penalty-free, and that freedom is your real leverage.

That leverage is worth using. If you are out of term, the cancellation fee that traps mid-contract switchers no longer applies, and you are free to take a better fixed-cash deal elsewhere or haggle your existing provider down. It is the same logic I apply to any recurring tech subscription: the moment the penalty for leaving disappears, your negotiating position transforms. If you rely on the same provider for connectivity and security, it is also worth reviewing your wider setup at renewal, from a good VPN for UK users to a solid Wi-Fi mesh system if your broadband renewal is the trigger. Renewal is a natural audit point, not just a rollover.

One more practical note for upgraders. If your renewal bundles a new handset, the contractual rise sits on top of an already rising hardware market, so the device you choose matters as much as the airtime. Value flagships make the maths easier to swallow, which is part of why I keep pointing readers toward options like the OnePlus 13 as a UK value flagship rather than the most expensive tier, though a striking flip such as the Motorola Razr 70 Ultra can still earn its place if the lifetime cash cost stacks up. And if a wearable or watch plan is part of the deal, the same scrutiny applies; the cash rise on a Galaxy Watch plan is just as real as the one on your phone line, even when it looks like a small add-on.

Where I land on Ofcom’s transparency rule

I think Ofcom got the structure right and the timing late. Banning inflation-linked terms from January 2025 was the correct call, because a contract you cannot price at the point of signing is not a fair contract, and the regulator’s own data on how few people understand CPI made the case unanswerable. But the rule’s biggest weakness is the one Ofcom could not legislate away: it leaves millions of pre-2025 customers on the old terms, and it does nothing to stop fixed cash rises outpacing inflation in the very deals it cleaned up. So my stance is simple. Treat the ban as a transparency win, not a saving, and let it change your behaviour rather than your assumptions. Read the pounds-and-pence figure, check whether you are free to leave, and if you are, use that freedom. The regulator has made the number visible. Whether it stays low is now entirely down to whether you bother to look.

MMTW Editorial