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There's never been a better time to switch to a new broadband deal.
Chances are, your existing broadband plan has increased in the last few weeks. The biggest UK broadband providers will charge between £2 - £3.50 extra, or raise subscriptions between 4.5 - 7.5%. The price hike that applies to your broadband will depend on the supplier and when you signed-up.
We've got a comprehensive rundown of the exact price rise coming to BT, Sky, TalkTalk, Plusnet, and EE broadband customers. But millions across the UK do not have to put up with the price hikes.
According to data published by Ofcom, some 7.4 million UK households are currently out of contract and could switch to a new subscription with no repercussions. Broadband providers regularly save their best deals for new subscribers, with loyalty rarely rewarded.
EE has unleashed one of the most enticing new offers to attract switchers. For a limited time, switch to EE and your broadband bills will be slashed to £0 for the first three months of your new contract. Yes, really.
That means you'll pay nothing for internet until July or August at the earliest.
Switch to EE full-fibre broadband and pay £0 for the first 3 months
For a limited time, EE is offering free broadband for the first 3 months of your contract. Available on speedy full-fibre packages, like EE Full Fibre 300 and the all-singing, all-dancing Made For Gamers package with the new Wi-Fi 7 hub and 1.6Gbps download speeds. If you're not outside of your current contract, EE will contribute up to £300 towards early exit fees
EE Full Fibre 300
$36.99
EE isn't offering free broadband across all of its plans, with only a select few full-fibre packages eligible for the giveaway. Full Fibre 300 package, which offers average download speeds of 308Mbps, is one of these.
EE Full Fibre 300 includes a guaranteed minimum speed of 150Mbps and no upfront cost. At the end of the three months of £0, EE will charge £36.99 a month for these speeds.
That cost rises to £39.99 in March 2026, following the latest Ofcom rules that requires broadband brands to spell out price rises "in pounds and pence".
Unbelievably, this isn't the best broadband offer around for those looking to switch.
EE will include its next-generation Wi-Fi 7 router, the Smart Hub Pro, and up to four Smart Wi-Fi Pro extenders at no extra cost with its maxed-out broadband plans, dubbed Busiest Home Bundle and Made For Gamers, which include download speeds of 1.6Gbps EE PRESS OFFICE Plusnet has slashed the price of its fastest full-fibre broadband plan to just £36.99 a month.
For that, you'll benefit from eye-watering download speeds of 900Mbps. For context, that's over 11x faster than the average home internet speed as measured in the UK earlier this year — so you'll haveno problem downloading large files, streaming movies in the highest quality, or making stutter-free video calls at peak times.
The price of this broadband plan mirrors exactly the Full Fibre 300 package from EE, with the annual price hike bringing the monthly cost to £39.99 a month from March 2026 onwards. Like the latest broadband deals from EE, there's no upfront cost either.
While Plusnet isn't waiving the monthly cost of your broadband for the first three months of your contract, new subscribers will benefit from a £100 Reward Card sent to them in the post.
This takes the form of a pre-paid Mastercard debit card which can be used anywhere that accepts Mastercard... which is pretty much everywhere.
Get paid £100 with Reward Card when you switch to Plusnet's fastest full-fibre speeds
Switch to Plusnet's fastest broadband deal and be rewarded with a £100 Gift Card. This generous giveaway takes the form of a pre-paid Mastercard debit card which can be used anywhere that accepts Mastercard... in other words, pretty much anywhere. You could even use it to pay your Plusnet bills!
Full Fibre 900
$36.99
You can use the pre-paid card to treat yourself to a new gadget, put it towards a holiday, or even use the £100 in credit to pay the first three months of your new Plusnet broadband deal. That means you'll unlock the same perk as EE is offering — but with 3x faster download speeds.
For a limited time, Plusnet will send £100 on a pre-paid Mastercard that can be spent anywhere — from restaurant bills to broadband bills
PLUSNET PRESS OFFICE
Both EE and Plusnet leverage Openreach's nationwide network of full-fibre cables.
If you've had a broadband contract with either one of these brands, BT, TalkTalk, Post Office Broadband, or Sky, to name just a few, then you'll be able to switch to either of the above deals without an engineer drilling any new holes at your property.
Earlier this year, the BT-owned firm revealed 17 million homes had been successfully upgraded to the speediest full-fibre internet connection. These next-generation connections offer download speeds up to 1,600Mbps.
Fibre-optic cables deliver faster download and upload speeds, as well as improved reliability compared to traditional internet services. Connections are less likely to be disrupted by bad weather conditions, and you won't see speeds dip at peak times, when all of your neighbours are trying to stream a boxset at the same time.
Unlike traditional copper-based cables, which were wedded to a landline phone, this new generation of full-fibre packages don't ship with a home phone. You can add an optional landline that's compatible with fibre infrastructure, often dubbed Digital Voice by internet providers, but it's not necessary.
An Openreach engineer is pictured installing fibre-optic cables to an exchange location BT PRESS OFFICE According to figures published by Ofcom, the average home broadband speed in the UK sits at roughly 73Mbps. If you upgrade to any of the 300Mbps full-fibre plans listed above, you'll enjoy 4x faster download speeds — meaning you can stream high-quality video, back-up photos to the cloud, download software updates, and make video calls with friends and family anywhere in the world without any buffering.
If you're unsure about what broadband speed you need in your home. We've put together the average download speeds for an hour-long television show episode in Standard Definition (SD), roughly 450MB in size.
- 73Mbps, the average broadband speed in the UK: 54 seconds
- 150Mbps, the lowest speed available with most full-fibre packages: 24 seconds
- 500Mbps, widely available from all full-fibre providers: 7 seconds
- 1Gbps (or 1,000Mbps) is not available from all broadband companies: 4 seconds
Some of the biggest broadband providers in the UK rely on infrastructure from Openreach, including BT, EE, Sky, TalkTalk, and Plusnet. If you're able to access gigabit-capable broadband from any of these companies, you should be able to maintain those speeds when you switch to another.
Openreach aims to fit 25 million homes and businesses with full-fibre connections by 2026, rising to 30 million by the end of the decade. Given that BT-owned Openreach was able to connect 4.2 million premises to its Ultrafast Full Fibre network in 2024 — equivalent to a new connection every eight seconds.
However, not every broadband brand relies on Openreach.
Virgin Media maintains its own dedicated fibre network, which offers download speeds of up to 1,130Mbps to roughly 16 million homes, plus there are a number of other smaller brands building their own infrastructure to connect to customers directly, including Community Fibre, HyperOptic, and G.Network.
Despite the smaller footprint of these full-fibre suppliers, they're proving increasingly popular with British households looking for alternatives from the biggest brands.
Under the One Touch Switch system, which made its debut in September 2024, switching between any of the broadband brands listed above is much, much easier.
Under this simplifed system, customers only need to contact their new provider, which will handle the entire switching process, including liaising with the existing provider.
If that sounds familiar, it's likely because the process of switching between broadband brands running on BT-owned Openreach cables has been like this for years, but it was moving between different full-fibre networks, from Openreach to Virgin Media for example, where customers would need to contact multiple customer service teams and organise the switchover date themselves.
UK regulator Ofcom outlines the simple 3-step process to ditch your current broadband deal for something new
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Bringing the same hassle-free switching that's existed between Openreach-powered brands since 2013 should remove almost all fears about switching broadband providers — being left without a connection for weeks, evenings spent on the phone to arrange a date for an engineer appointment, paying two broadband bills because the cut-off date and start of your new contract didn't line-up perfectly.
Ahead of the (long-delayed) launch of One Touch Switch, Ofcom released data that showed four in 10 people (41%) in the UK would decide against switching because of the headache of having to contact more than one provider. A similar number (43%) told the regulator they were put off switching because it seemed too time-consuming.
And of those who had decided to switch, almost a quarter (24%) who reached out to their current provider faced unwanted attempts to persuade them to stay. Under the new system, you only need to sign-up to a broadband deal with the new provider, who will handle the switchover date and admin with your current internet supplier behind the scenes.
