Sky, Comcast’s entertainment and connectivity business in Europe, has begun notifying customers about price increases that take effect April 1, 2026, across Sky TV packages, Sky Broadband, and home phone services. Comcast has reported Sky at roughly 17.6 million customers in the UK and Italy at year-end 2025 (reported as “customer relationships”), putting meaningful scale behind a familiar subscription dynamic: price changes land, and customer decisions tend to cluster around the notice.

The size of the increase varies by package. Reported examples include a £3 per month increase for broadband, £1 to £3 per month increases across TV tiers depending on plan, and a £1 per month increase for home phone.

The operationally important detail is the contract-change mechanic. Coverage of Sky’s customer communications indicates some broadband and home phone customers can cancel without early termination fees within 30 days of receiving the price-rise notification. Eligibility can vary across Sky’s TV products and by contract status, including differences between satellite TV and streaming-delivered TV services, and whether TV and broadband were purchased together as a bundle or added separately.

Regulatory context also matters here. In the UK, the Office of Communications (Ofcom) guidance generally requires telecom providers to give at least 30 days’ notice and to allow customers to exit penalty-free if an in-contract price rise exceeds what the customer agreed at sign-up. That helps explain why the 30-day window often becomes the focal point of how price changes play out.

INSIDER TAKE

This is a useful case study in how a price change combined with a defined exit right can reshape churn dynamics. Regardless of whether the window is driven by regulation or product policy, the mechanics can push forward decisions and concentrate cancellations, downgrades, and save attempts into a short period.

That concentration is the point subscription operators should watch closely. The near-term impact can be negative simply because decisions cluster, while the total impact over time remains an open question until the data lands.

If you plan to test or emulate a defined, penalty-free exit window, plan for it like a scheduled churn event

• Capacity planning: Model contact volume and self-serve traffic day by day across the window, including the first surge after notice and a second surge close to the deadline. Even when long-run churn is unchanged, the workload profile rarely is.
• Save motion readiness: Decide in advance what is automated versus rep-assisted (downgrade, pause, term change, retention credit). Make downgrade paths obvious and low-friction so “cancel” is not the only clean option.
• Cohort math, not averages: Flat increases create uneven percentage impact. Segment by ARPU and tenure so you can anticipate which cohorts are most likely to react inside the window and tailor save motions accordingly.
• Measurement discipline: Track cancels vs downgrades vs saves, plus reactivations and win-backs after the window closes. The key question is not just how many leave, but how many decisions get accelerated into the window and what the retained base looks like afterward.
• Comms that match the mechanism: When exit rights are explicit, customers read the notice as a decision point. Value justification should be concrete, and downgrade options should be easy to find and easy to execute.

What to watch next: the mix during Sky’s 30-day window (downgrade share, save rate, credits offered, support load) and whether cancellations represent net new churn or primarily churn timing pulled forward by a clear deadline.