Millions of O2 customers to be hit by record price rise – how much will YOU have to pay?

Virgin Media O2 has announced how much extra mobile phone customers will need to pay later this year. Starting from April 2022, customers with both O2 and Virgin Mobile will see their bills rise by as much as 11.7 percent. That’s the biggest price hike in years – and could see customers pay as much as £48 more for their data plan.

O2 uses a set formula to calculate its annual price rise, which uses the Retail Price Index (RPI) (measured at 7.8 percent last month) and adds 3.9 percent. For comparison, at the same point last year, the RPI was measured at 1.4 percent, so O2 customers would see bills rise by 5.3 percent. That’s less than half what O2 customers will face in the coming weeks.

How much extra you’ll need to pay depends on what type of contract you’re on and which network you’re with.

Virgin Mobile has said that the 11.7 percent price rise will kick in from April 1 2022 and will affect what you pay for calls, texts and data. Meanwhile, O2 customers the price rise will be dependent on when you joined the network.

O2 customers that joined or upgraded prior to March 25 2021 will see their bills rise by the RPI rate (i.e 7.8 percent). For those that joined or upgraded after that date their bills will rise by 11.7 percent.

Like with Virgin Mobile, the price increase is for airtime charges and won’t affect the monthly cost of your handset.

Speaking about the news, an O2 spokesperson said: “We recognise price changes are never welcome, and always balance keeping our prices competitive with the need to continue investing in the services that our customers use and love.

“For most customers the price increase only applies to the airtime part of their bill and with our most popular tariffs costing from as little as 33p per day for superfast data with unlimited minutes and texts, our customers receive incredible value as well as extra perks such as Priority.”

The news of the Virgin Mobile and O2 price rise comes amid a cost of living crisis in the UK that is affecting a wide range of products and services, including energy prices, petrol prices and food prices amid surging inflation.

And while Virgin Media and O2 customers may be left disappointed by the upcoming bill rise, other telecoms firms are rising bills as well.

This week Sky confirmed TV and broadband price rises of 9.3 percent, while earlier this year Express.co.uk reported on how price rises were set for the likes of BT, Plusnet, Vodafone and EE as well.