Community Fibre Joins UK Gov Charter to Stop Unexpected Bill Increases

UK ISP CommunityFibre, which has invested c.£1bn to build a 5Gbps speed full fibre (FTTP) broadband network across 1.342 million homes (inc. 185k businesses within 200 metres of their network) – mostly in London, has just become the latest internet provider to sign-up to the Government’s new Telecoms Consumer Charter (TCC).

The Government announced the new charter last month, which succeeded in getting the major UK broadband and phone providers – including BT (EE, Plusnet), Virgin Media and O2, VodafoneThree (Vodafone and Three UK), Sky Broadband, TalkTalk and KCOM – to make a commitment to “stop unexpected bill increases“ (see our summary).

The good news is that CommunityFibre has now signed up to the same charter. But it should be said that the TCC doesn’t do anything to stop mid-contract price hikes themselves and nor does it address the unfairness of how mid-contract price hikes are currently being applied (e.g. applying the same flat c.£2-£4 monthly increase to those who pay just c.£20 a month and those who pay c.£100 – disproportionately targeting those least able to afford it).

The TCC is itself a somewhat belated reaction to last year’s controversial decision by mobile operator O2 (here), which suddenly increased the cost of their existing mid-contract price hikes policy and applied that to their existing customers too (i.e. those who had signed-up via the previous policy were forced to accept the new one and its higher prices).