Virgin Media increases annual price rise to £4 per month

From today, new Virgin Media broadband and TV contracts will come with higher annual price rises.

Customers will see their bills go up by £4 a month each April, compared with the previous yearly increase of £3.50.

The move follows BT and EE, which both raised their annual rises from £3 to £4 a month earlier this year.

Increased price rises

New Virgin Media customers taking out broadband-only or broadband and TV packages will now face steeper annual bill increases.

From 2nd October 2025, contracts taken out or renewed will rise by £4 a month each year - 50p more than the £3.50 monthly rise introduced in January 2025.

For Virgin Media Volt bundles, which include an O2 mobile SIM, the broadband and TV element will go up by £4 a month, while the mobile part will remain at the £1.80 annual rise, bringing the total increase for these plans to £5.80 a month.

Annual rises in fixed pound-and-pence amounts only became mandatory at the start of this year under new Ofcom rules, but Virgin Media's move follows a wider industry trend.

BT and EE both lifted their yearly broadband rises from £3 to £4 a month in July 2025, with BT-owned Plusnet matching the increase from 5th August.

A Virgin Media spokesperson said: "Customers taking one of our latest packages, which offer fantastic value including Netflix as standard on all TV bundles and Sky Sports in HD at no extra cost, will see their prices rise by £4 a month each April. No prices are changing now and no changes are being made to existing customer contracts.

"This 13p a day rise represents excellent value for connectivity customers use more than ever and is greatly outweighed by the £5m we invest every single day into our networks and services to ensure we continue to provide the fast, reliable connectivity our customers expect and rely on."

Existing Virgin Media customers are unaffected for now, but anyone who recontracts will be moved onto the new terms.

Why are broadband prices going up?

Broadband providers argue that annual price rises are needed to cover the growing costs of running and upgrading their networks. Rising inflation, higher energy bills, investment in faster speeds, and increased data demand are among the reasons often given.

Virgin Media also say the 50p increase to their annual price rise policy is offset by recent changes to packages, including the addition of Netflix as standard.

In practice, though, many of the largest providers - such as Virgin Media, BT and EE - build these rises into their contracts upfront. This means that while some providers may offer notice and a chance to cancel, customers signing with the big players generally can't reject the hikes, as they agreed to them at the point of sale.

To make the process clearer, Ofcom now requires providers to set out annual rises in pounds and pence rather than percentages, so customers know in advance exactly how much their bills will go up each year.

Lax regulation

The change has created new problems, however. Because rises are now applied as flat pound-and-pence amounts, the increases can be harsher than they would have been under the old inflation-linked system.

Customers on cheaper plans are hit particularly hard, as they face the same £4 monthly rise as those on premium packages - where a percentage-based increase would have been more proportionate.

The latest moves by Virgin Media, BT and EE to push rises higher highlight this imbalance. While the rules make annual increases more transparent, Ofcom has not set a cap or tied them to inflation, leaving providers free to raise charges above what customers might have faced under the previous system.

The result is that households may now be paying more overall - trading genuine affordability for the clarity of knowing in advance exactly how much bills will rise.