Team Partners Telecommunications

What does CPI have to do with telecoms?!

Posted on Apr 25, 2024

You may not agree with this, but we can’t help feeling that there is something deeply insidious with the way that prices continue to sneak up whilst our income doesn’t. For many reading this it may not matter that the everyday necessities of life are costing a few pounds more here and there, or indeed we may have an income stream that fluctuates month to month so that these price increases get absorbed almost unnoticed, and that, we suggest, is where the insidiousness comes in.

Search the meaning of the word ‘insidious’ and one reads that it means ‘stealthy, subtle, cunning, or treacherous. working in a subtle or apparently innocuous way, but nevertheless deadly’, and we use the word advisedly. It occurs to us that many of the price rises we see get away unchallenged because those who have to pay them fall into one of two camps, they’re either so challenged by the cost of survival that they feel they have no voice, or they are sufficiently well heeled that they don’t matter. As a result, many of the companies behind the services we rely on and cannot do without are happy to load their customers with the maximum price increases they can get away with whilst making what could be considered as being outrageous profits.

Here's perhaps a more salient point, seeing as this is a telecoms blog. We have all become used to seeing the price of our mobile contracts rising annually by the CPI, the Cost Price Index and then by a further 3.9%, and you may have noticed that some suppliers, BT amongst them, have started to add similar increases to broadband and phone contracts.

Why?

Did you know that the CPI is based on the shop cost of a basket of 743 items? And that in 2023 digital compact cameras, spirit based drinks and non-chart CD albums bought in shops were removed from the basket? Happily, though, e-bikes, security cameras and frozen berries were added. So that’s OK then.

No, it isn’t, because nearly 50% of the basket is made up of foods, clothing and furniture, and here’s our question: what possible relationship is there between these items and the running of BT or one of the others? Justify an increase by detailing energy costs or increased wages, but basing your rises on the cost of frozen berries? We don’t think so.

Are we being unfair? You decide, but then consider the extra 3.9%...and then tell us we are.

As for us at TPTele...if we’re forced by suppliers to put our prices up, we will, but until then, no way!