In an unsurprising development, both Sky TV (Sky Broadband) and EE (BT) have now confirmed their separate plans for withdrawing the old Netflix Basic (£7.99) plan from their various bundles. The move follows on from last year’s decision (here) by the video streaming giant to replace Basics with their “Standard with adverts” plan.
Just in case anybody has forgotten. Netflix stopped offering their old ad-free Basic plan to new or rejoining members in October 2023. But this raised a question mark over the fate of the service for those TV and broadband providers that have been bundling it with some of their packages, often as part of a special agreement with the streaming giant.
Sky actually stopped offering the original Basic plan last year on its bundles (e.g. Ultimate TV), although until now it wasn’t clear what would happen to existing customers with a related bundle. Meanwhile, EE has continued to offer the Basic plan, but Cord Busters reports that this is all coming to an end.
Firstly, Sky have confirmed that customers with Netflix’s Basic plan on their related bundles will, from September 2024, be “automatically” changed to the ‘Standard with adverts’ plan. However, you won’t pay any less, despite the ads tier costly less than the Basic’s one, which seems a bit unfair. Customers can alternatively upgrade to Standard by paying an extra £6 per month or cancel.
Finally, EE has just joined Sky in withdrawing the Basic plan from related packages for new customers. New customers will instead get the ‘Standard with adverts’ plan on related bundles (e.g. Entertainment or Big Entertainment), while existing customers have been warned that they can only keep the Basic tier until they renew their contract, or until late 2026 if they’re out of contract.
One catch here is that the new Standard with Ads plan is currently only supported on EE TV’s latest 4K Pro (inc. Mini versions) and the 4K Apple TV boxes. But EE has pledged to upgrade customers on older boxes, at no extra cost, to the latest kit if they’re affected.