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A subtle but very important change is slowly happening behind the scenes of the UK’s consumer telecoms industry, as broadband and mobile providers start realising they need to adapt to the Competition and Markets Authority‘s (CMA) new guidance on unfair commercial practices, particularly around the complex issue of “price transparency“.
The relatively recent Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024 (DMCCA), which contains various new price transparency provisions, officially attained Royal Assent on 24th May 2024. But as usual with these things, it took a bit longer for the CMA to produce the necessary guidance to help businesses know what they’d have to do in order to adapt to it, which finally happened on 18th November 2025.
The Guidance is naturally aimed at the companies that sell services to consumers, although as usual it doesn’t hurt for consumers to also be aware of these rules. The reason for this is that it could give you some additional ammunition to use, such as if ever you need to argue that a broadband or mobile provider misled you over its pricing (a few providers do still have a nasty habit of masking additional costs).
The new Guidance tackles such issues in a number of ways, albeit largely through requiring greater transparency and a clearer structure to the buying process. The full 58-page document contains all the necessary details and examples, but we’ve summarised a few of the key points below.
Key Price Transparency Rules
➤ The first interaction that many people have with their future service provider is often via an ‘invitation to purchase‘, which reflects when a trader gives information to consumers about a product and its price (i.e. this could be an advert or an item listing on a website etc.). This exists before the consumer makes an in-principle decision to purchase a product and before it is possible to make a purchase.
Traders are responsible for ensuring that the prices of the products presented in an invitation to purchase do not mislead consumers, in particular, the price presented should be “realistic, meaningful and attainable” for the product being advertised.
➤ The ‘total price‘ should be presented in the invitation to purchase in a clear and timely way that the consumer is likely to see and “must include any fees, taxes, charges or other payments” that the consumer will necessarily incur if they purchase the product. This includes any mandatory charges, even in early-stage advertising. If a consumer is later presented with new mandatory charges that were not disclosed at the outset, this is likely to breach the UCP provisions (rules).
Alternatively, if, because of the nature of the product, the price (or a part of it) cannot reasonably be calculated in advance, the invitation to purchase must include information that enables the consumer to calculate the non-calculable (parts of the) price. This will most commonly apply when the nature of the product means that the total price will depend on a consumer’s requirements. The information must be provided with as much prominence as the part of the total price that is calculable in advance and given in the invitation to purchase.
➤ Drip pricing is now prohibited. This reflects the practice of showing consumers an initial headline price for a product and subsequently introducing additional mandatory charges as consumers proceed with a purchase or transaction. In short, no more unexpected mandatory surcharges being added right at the end of the order process (e.g. if a hotel advertises a room for £100 and then adds an unexpected “weekend surcharge” of £25 per night right at the end of the order), unless of course the customer has specifically selected to add a truly optional extra feature.
➤ Partitioned pricing is “generally” prohibited. This reflects the practice of providing the component parts of a price without giving the overall total, which is now generally prohibited since it is not consistent with providing the ‘total price’ of the product. The requirement to provide the total price does NOT prevent a trader from offering consumers subsequent discounts so that the final price ends up being less than the originally advertised total price.
In practice, over the past few weeks and months, this has resulted in a number of broadband and mobile providers adjusting how they present their pricing, particularly with respect to charges for things like service activations, installations, and home delivery charges (usually used for routers). Some providers have already removed these charges entirely (i.e. absorbing them into monthly rental) or changed how they’re presented to be more transparent.
At the time of writing we still see a few telecoms providers, particularly at the smaller-scale end of the market, that probably need to do a bit more work to adjust for the new Guidelines. But most do appear to already be doing the right thing.