Four things worth knowing before your broadband bill goes up again in April

This is general information about how broadband and mobile pricing works in Britain, drawn from Ofcom's published research. It is not financial advice and it is not a recommendation about any provider.

One. The date that matters is your contract end date, not your bill date.

Almost everything in Ofcom's findings turns on one moment: the end of your minimum contract term. Before it, you are usually paying a promoted price. After it, if you do nothing, you move to the list price. Ofcom's spend data shows out-of-contract customers paying £7 a month more than in-contract customers for standalone broadband, £8 more where a landline is included, and £9 more where there is TV as well.

Providers are required to tell you this is coming. Under Ofcom's rules they must contact you between ten and forty days before your contract ends, by text, email or letter, and tell you the end date, what you pay now, what you will pay afterwards, any notice period, and their best available deals including ones offered only to new customers. If you are already out of contract, they must send you an equivalent reminder once a year.

Those messages are easy to mistake for marketing. They are the notification.

Two. Switching is now a one-step process, and the old reasons not to have gone.

Since September 2024 all residential broadband and landline switching in the UK runs on One Touch Switch. You give a few details to the provider you are moving to, and they arrange it. You do not have to ring your existing provider to cancel. Over two million households used it between launch and the end of last year.

Two things that used to make people hesitate have been removed. You do not pay notice-period charges beyond the switch date, so you are no longer billed by two companies at once. And if the switch goes wrong or leaves you without service for more than a working day, the provider must compensate you.

Mobile works similarly. Text PAC to 65075 to keep your number, or STAC to 75075 if you do not want to. The code must arrive within one minute, and the switch happens within one working day.

Three. If money is tight, social tariffs exist and almost nobody knows about them.

These are cheaper packages for households on certain means-tested benefits, including Universal Credit. Ofcom counts more than thirty of them now, up from three in 2020, ranging from £12.50 to £24 a month for broadband and £10 to £12 for mobile.

The number that stopped us was this. In October last year, seventy per cent of eligible households had never heard of them, and take-up sits below nine per cent of the households that qualify. Ofcom also notes that some standard low-cost SIM-only deals are cheaper than the social tariffs, so it is worth comparing rather than assuming.

Four. Check what you are paying for a landline you may not use.

Ofcom collected data from the largest providers showing that seventy per cent of households buying broadband and a landline together did not make a single outgoing call in the second quarter of last year. Standalone broadband, without a phone line, was on average £7 a month cheaper than the equivalent bundle in September 2025, and considerably more than that on some packages.

Two caveats worth holding. If anyone in your household relies on a landline for a personal alarm or telecare device, this is not a straightforward change and the provider needs to know. And BT's old copper phone network is being switched off by the end of January 2027, so how your phone works is changing anyway.

And one thing this Playbook is not going to tell you.

Whether the hour it takes to do any of this is worth it. Ofcom's own research found around three in five people saying they would stay on their current deal even if they could save money elsewhere, and about half saying the saving would be too small to justify the time. That is a legitimate answer. The point of the numbers above is that it should be a decision rather than something that happens to you in April.

The Quernal provides general information, not financial advice.