Why did my business phone bill go up mid-contract?

You signed up at one price. A year in, the bill’s gone up, and nobody asked you. You’re still in contract, so you can’t leave. And the increase arrives as a single bland line — an “annual adjustment”, a “CPI-linked change”. So what actually happened, and were they allowed to do it?

How the mid-contract rise worked

For years, the standard trick across UK telecoms was to write a price rise intothe contract from the start — usually linked to inflation (CPI or RPI), plus an extra percentage on top, commonly around 3.9%. You signed for a headline price, but the small print let them lift it every spring by a number nobody could predict at signing, because it depended on a future inflation figure.

This wasn’t a fringe practice. As of April 2024, Ofcom found that around six in tenUK broadband and mobile customers were on contracts subject to inflation-linked price rises. A Guardian investigation into the practice — which it dubbed “greedflation” — found some customers facing mid-contract jumps of up to 17.3%.

What Ofcom changed in January 2025

The practice became notorious enough that the regulator stepped in. From 17 January 2025, Ofcom banned inflation-linked mid-contract price rises for new contracts, and now requires any in-contract price increase to be set out upfront, in pounds and pence, prominently and clearly, at the point of sale. In other words: if they’re going to put your price up, they have to tell you the actual amount before you sign, not hide it behind a formula.

That’s genuine progress — but note the limits. It applies to new contracts, so older deals can still carry the old inflation-linked clauses. And it doesn’t cap rises; it just forces them to be stated honestly. If you signed before 2025, the rise that surprised you may well have been “allowed” precisely because it was buried in a clause you didn’t read — which tells you something about how the contract was written in the first place.

Why the rise existed at all

Here’s the part worth sitting with. The annual rise was rarely about the provider’s costs going up. Connecting a phone call gets cheaper over time, not dearer. The rise existed because every extra pound on your monthly bill does two things for them: it’s pure additional margin, and — when the business is eventually sold to a larger group — that fattened monthly figure, multiplied across every customer, makes the whole company worth more. Your “small annual adjustment” wasn’t covering their costs. It was inflating their sale price, and you were funding it.

A price that just… stays the price

There’s no mid-contract rise to ambush you with here, because there’s no long contract. Membershipis a flat £149/month, month to month. If we ever did change it, you’d be free to walk the same day — no minimum term, no exit fee, free port-out. That freedom is the discipline: we can’t rely on a lock-in to make a price rise stick, so we just keep the price honest.

And the calls underneath it aren’t a moving target either — they’re passed through at the wholesale rate BT charges, a regulated rate agreed by Ofcom, published in full on our call-rates pagewith nothing added on top. The number you can see is the number you pay. Curious what you’re overpaying right now? Run your numbers through the savings calculator.