Moving home with broadband: who charges you to leave, who does not, and where your own contract actually says so

The short version, for somebody about to ring their provider

Direct answer: Nothing in Ofcom's rules makes a provider waive an exit fee because it cannot serve your new address. Most providers do waive it, and they do it under their own contract, which is a different thing and gets you a different conversation.

Almost every page written about moving home with broadband, including the version of this one we have just replaced, says the same reassuring thing: if your provider cannot reach your new address, the regulator makes them let you go without a charge. It is a lovely sentence and there is no rule behind it. The correction is set out in full further down, along with three others.

What is true instead is more useful, and it took reading ten companies' contracts to find. Five of the ten providers checked waive the fee outright, and a sixth waives it inside its own network area, so most UK movers who get stuck are covered by their own contract. Their wording is often better than anything a regulator would have written for them, and a clause number from a contract you actually signed is a stronger thing to hold than a regulation, because the company wrote it and cannot tell you it does not apply.

Three of the ten do charge you, and they publish that too, so there is no argument to be won on the wording there either. One reserves the right to charge without saying whether it will, which is its own kind of answer. And Virgin Media does both, depending on which side of its network you land on. Four different answers across ten companies, and the only way to know which is yours is to look yours up.

Then there is the reason almost nobody knows any of this, and it has a section of its own further down. A mover goes to the moving-home help page, which is where a moving-home answer ought to be, finds dates and engineer appointments and what to do with the router, and finds nothing about the money at all. That is how a regulation that says something else ends up standing in for a clause that says exactly the right thing.

If you are still in a minimum term, this page is about you. If you are out of contract there is no early termination charge to discuss at all, and a move is a shopping moment rather than an admin one: see what the new address can get before you agree to take anything with you.

See what your new address can get, before anything else

Direct answer: Whether your own provider reaches the new address is the single fact that picks your path, and it takes about ten minutes to establish.

Everything on this page branches on that one question. If your provider can serve the new address, nothing is ending, no early termination charge arises at all, and the live question becomes what a move does to your minimum term. If they cannot, the account is ending and the live question is whether a charge comes with it. Those are different questions with different clauses behind them, and answering the wrong one wastes a week.

Check on more than one network while you are there, because that tells you what your options are if the answer turns out to be no. A provider that cannot reach your new street is not a disaster if three others can, and knowing that before you ring changes the conversation from a plea into a choice.

The rule everybody quotes, and what it actually says

Direct answer: Ofcom's own consumer guidance on moving home says nothing at all about early termination charges, and nothing about what a provider must do when you move.

The claim runs like this: Ofcom's General Conditions require a provider to waive early termination charges where it cannot supply service at your new address, and General Condition C7 is the one to cite. We published that claim on this page four separate times. It appears on comparison sites, on forums, in consumer articles and in a great deal of advice given in good faith. It is not true.

General Condition C7 is titled “Switching”. It governs the process of moving from one provider to another: who contacts whom, what the gaining provider has to tell you, how the transfer is executed. The only place in it that an early termination charge appears at all is a disclosure requirement, at C7.11(e), that you be told the amount, including “the amount of the Early Termination Charge due at the estimated Migration Date”. Read that carefully. A condition requiring a company to state the charge correctly, at a particular date, is a condition written on the assumption that the charge is payable. It is the opposite of a waiver.

The consolidated General Conditions were read in full and searched for any home-move, change-of-address or relocation provision. There is none. Nor does the regulator's own consumer guidance on moving home fill the gap, because its only sentence about the contract is practical rather than protective, and it is this: “If you're changing broadband provider, you'll need to cancel your current contract and arrange a start date for your new service in time for when you move.”

None of which is a criticism of Ofcom. The protections it does publish are real, they are set out further down, and one of them is a genuine penalty-free exit. It is simply triggered by your provider changing the contract rather than by you changing address. Our exit fee waiver guide takes the waiver question apart in more depth than this page does.

Find your clause, and write the letter that quotes it

Direct answer: Look up what your own provider's contract says about a move, because there is no common rule and the answers run from a full waiver to a full charge.

Three questions. Who you are with, whether they can reach the new address, and whether you are still in your minimum term. A fourth asks whether you are taking the same package, which changes what the letter says rather than which answer you get. Then it hands you your own provider's wording, with its clause number, and writes the letter that quotes it back to them.

There are two letters behind it and the choice between them is the point. Where your provider cannot reach the new address, the account is ending and the letter asks for the charge to be dropped, quoting the clause. Where it can, nothing is ending, so a letter about an early termination charge would get a polite note saying none arises. That reader gets four questions about the minimum term and the move fee instead, to be asked while they can still walk away.

It runs entirely in your browser. There is no form to submit, nothing sent to any server and nothing stored: what you choose and type is assembled on this page and gone when you close the tab. Every quoted line in it is published wording, read on the company's own site on 28 September 2026, and where a company publishes nothing it says so rather than filling the gap.

Not on the list? Ten providers were read in full and an eleventh would have meant guessing. The section on finding the clause yourself works for any provider, and it is two minutes of searching a document you already agreed to.

Ten providers, four answers

Direct answer: Five waive the fee, three charge it, one reserves the right without saying which way it will go, and Virgin Media does both depending on which side of its network you land on.

Start with the five that waive it, because between them they carry most UK households. BT sets out a list of circumstances in which its early termination charges do not apply, introduced by “You won't have to pay the fees and charges referred to in clause 13a if:” One of the listed cases is the one that matters here: “you move home and we cannot provide a service at your new UK address.” EE says nearly the same thing. Its own lead-in at point 11c: “You won't have to pay an early termination charge or minimum term add-on early termination charge referred to in point 11a if: ” and the item is “you move home and we cannot provide the price plan service at your new UK address.” That is no coincidence and this page will not present it as two independent findings, because BT and EE are the same group and the clauses are near identical.

Plusnet is the plainest of the ten, at clause 9.4 of its broadband service terms: “If we can't provide your current service(s) to your new UK address, you won't have to pay a fee to end your agreement early.” It also publishes something none of the other nine does, at clause 9.3, for the case where the new address can be served but not as well: “If you have full fibre broadband, but we can't provide it at your new home, you can move to our standard broadband or fibre broadband service without penalty if it is available in the area.” That is a genuinely thoughtful provision and almost nobody knows it exists.

NOW's contract gets there in two steps. Clause 13.5 opens “You can end this Contract, even if you are in a Minimum Term and without incurring early termination charges if:” and its sub-paragraph (c) reads, in full, “Condition 6.2 (ii) applies (you are moving home and the NOW Broadband and Calls services you are subscribing to are not available at your new Address)”. Clause 6.2(ii) is where the move itself is described: “If any NOW Broadband and Calls services which you are subscribing to is not available at your new Address you may either end this Contract or select another Product that is available there in which case this Contract will continue.” And Sky publishes the same position in the friendliest words of the ten, though on a sales page rather than in its terms: “In the event we're not available at your new address, you'll be able to cancel when you move with no exit fees.”

Three of the ten charge you, and all three publish it. TalkTalk, at clause 17.2: “We'll try our best to transfer the services but, if we can't transfer some or all of them, and any are in the minimum period, you may have to pay the charges to the end of the minimum period.” Hyperoptic, at clause 11.2: “If we can't provide our Services at your new home, you can end your Agreement with us. If you have a Minimum Period for your current Package and you end your Agreement before this Minimum Period has ended, you'll have to pay a Service Termination Fee for your Package.” Hyperoptic does publish a route out of it in the same clause, and it is worth knowing before you shop around: “Note that if you order or purchase our Services for (and to be provided immediately on moving to) your new home, and your move was during a Minimum Period for your Services at your previous home, we will not charge you a Service Termination Fee for ending the Services at your previous home.” Community Fibre, on its help page: “If we do not service your new location, you will unfortunately need to cancel your contract. If you are still within your minimum contract term, an Early Termination Fee (ETF) will apply.” Community Fibre is also the only one of the ten that publishes how the fee is worked out, and the second half of it is worth more than most of this page: “The ETF is calculated by multiplying your current core subscription price by the number of months remaining on your contract. We then multiply this by 90% to reflect the savings we make by collecting your money early and not providing you with a service for the remaining period.” And then: “As a goodwill gesture, we will apply the lower 90% calculation to all customers, regardless of when their contract was entered into. In addition, provided your final invoice is paid promptly, we will reduce the resulting ETF by a further 50%.” A Community Fibre customer who pays the final invoice promptly halves the charge, and almost nobody writing about this mentions it.

Vodafone is in a category of its own and it is the least useful of the four. Clause 7.5(c) gives you the right to end the agreement and then adds a sentence that takes the comfort straight back out: “If we are unable, for any reason, to provide a Home Broadband and Phone Services to your new address in the UK then you will be entitled to end this Agreement subject to provision by you of reasonable evidence of your change of address and payment by you of all charges owing up to the date that we disconnect your service. We reserve the right to apply any termination fees and charges.” That is neither a waiver nor a stated charge. The only way to find out what you will actually pay is to ask for a figure in writing, and to ask before you order anything at the new address rather than after.

Virgin Media is the fourth answer, and the two halves of it feel very different even though both can end with you paying nothing. Inside the network area, clause O3: “If this happens and we are unable to provide services to you, or if what we can provide is not equivalent to the service we have provided to you at your previous address, then you can cancel your services and you will not need to pay an early disconnection fee.” That second limb is the most generous single line any of the ten publishes, because it covers a service that is available but not equivalent. Outside the network area, clause O1: “If you are moving outside our network area but still within the UK, you should inform us of this when you submit your disconnection request, as we will credit you back the early disconnection fee if you follow our instructions and provide valid evidence of your new address within 30 days of our request for such evidence.” Same destination, and you are out of pocket in between, so say so at the point of the disconnection request rather than afterwards.

Why your provider’s help page does not tell you

Direct answer: Eight of the ten providers answer the exit fee question only in their terms and conditions. Only Sky and Community Fibre answer it on a page a mover would find by searching, and Sky's is a sales page rather than a contract.

This is the finding that explains the rest of the page, and it is the reason the myth this page corrects has spread so far. Every provider has a moving-home help page. They are clear, friendly and genuinely useful: how much notice to give, when the engineer comes, what happens to your router, how to book a date. What they do not cover is the money you might owe if the move goes wrong.

Which is not a trick. A help page is written for the ordinary move, where the provider can serve the new address and nothing unusual happens, which is the overwhelming majority of them. The exit charge belongs to the contract because it is a contractual term, and the contract is where a company puts the things it may one day have to rely on. It is simply not where anybody looks when they are three weeks from a move and worried about a bill.

Follow that through and you can see exactly how this page came to be wrong. A writer researching moving home reads ten help pages, finds nothing about the exit fee on any of them, and concludes reasonably enough that the answer must sit at a level above the individual company. A regulator is the obvious place for a rule that applies to everybody. So the writer reaches for the General Conditions, finds one about switching, and writes the sentence we wrote. Nobody was careless. The answer was simply filed somewhere else.

Two of the ten are the exception, and neither is quite in its terms. Sky puts it on the moving home page a customer would actually find, which deserves credit even though it is a sales page rather than a contract: “In the event we're not available at your new address, you'll be able to cancel when you move with no exit fees.” Community Fibre puts its position on a help page as well, and its answer is the opposite: “If we do not service your new location, you will unfortunately need to cancel your contract. If you are still within your minimum contract term, an Early Termination Fee (ETF) will apply.” Between them they show it can be done. The other eight leave it in the document nobody clicks.

What a move does to your minimum term

Direct answer: Usually nothing, whatever you have read, and the page being replaced said the opposite for every provider in its table.

If your provider can serve the new address, no early termination charge arises, because nothing is being terminated. The live question is what happens to the months you have left, and here the published answers are much more reassuring than their reputation. BT: “Any term remaining on your existing broadband contract will be transferred to your new address if you take the same service at your new address.” With one limit worth knowing about, on the same page: “However, if the term on your broadband contract is less than three months, a new three-month contract will apply at your new address.” So a BT customer with two months to run comes out of the move with three, which is a small cost rather than a fresh eighteen.

Virgin Media's clause O5 is unambiguous: “Where we have agreed with you to continue providing the same services that you received at your current address to your new address and this is during any minimum period, then that minimum period will continue at your new address”. NOW's clause 6.2(i) says the same in different words: “This Contract will continue unless you exercise a right to end it under this Contract or we are unable to transfer your NOW Broadband and Calls services to your new Address”. Three of the largest names in the market, all publishing that the clock keeps running rather than resetting.

Three more publish that a new term may start, which is not the same as saying it will, and the difference is worth holding on to when somebody tells you otherwise on the phone. Vodafone, at clause 7.5(b): “If you wish to transfer your Home Broadband and Phone Services to your new home, you may become subject to a new agreement with us and a new minimum period may be applicable from the service activation date at your new home.” Plusnet, at clause 9.1 of its broadband terms, makes it a choice rather than a consequence: “If you want to move your standard broadband, fibre broadband or Full Fibre broadband service during your minimum term you may have to pay a home move fee as set out in the Price Guide or enter a new agreement with us with a new minimum term.” TalkTalk, at clause 17.1, is the vaguest of them: “Further important information is available on our moving home page, including that we may need to start you on a new contract and there may be an additional charge.” Its help page does not answer the question either.

Hyperoptic is the one unambiguous restart of the ten, at clause 11.1: “we'll usually treat you as a new Customer. This means you'll have to go through the ordering process again and any Minimum Period for Services at your new home will start on the Services Start Date for those Services at your new home.” That is a real cost and it is published, so a Hyperoptic customer planning a move should price it in rather than discover it. And then the gap: EE, Sky and Community Fibre publish nothing at all about what a home move does to your minimum term, on their help pages or in their terms. Three of the ten leave a mover with no published answer at all, which is reported here as the absence it is rather than filled with a guess.

The two networks most likely to lose you are the two that charge

Direct answer: Hyperoptic and Community Fibre have the smallest footprints of the ten, so their customers are the most likely to move somewhere the network cannot reach, and they are two of the three that charge for it. TalkTalk is the only national provider of the ten that does.

Line the ten up by how much of the country their network reaches and the pattern is the wrong way round from the one you would expect. The national names, whose customers can usually be followed to wherever they are going, are the ones that publish a waiver. The two smallest networks, whose customers are the most likely to move somewhere the network simply does not go, are the two that publish a charge.

Think about what that means in practice. If you sign an eighteen month contract with a network that reaches one building in your town, the chance that your next address is outside it is very high indeed. That is precisely the customer for whom a waiver would matter most, and it is the customer who does not get one. TalkTalk is the only national provider of the ten that charges, which makes it the exception rather than the pattern.

None of the providers here is doing anything improper. A waiver is a commercial choice, and a network that only reaches some streets is bound to lose more movers than one that reaches most of them. Nobody here is behaving improperly, and it is worth saying plainly. A waiver costs a company money in exactly the cases where it loses a customer through no fault of anybody's, and a network covering selected streets will hit those cases far more often than one covering most of the country. The commercial logic is sound. It is published. It is simply not what a buyer is thinking about on the day they sign.

So the practical version of this, for anybody choosing rather than moving: if you are looking at a network that reaches a handful of buildings near you, and there is any chance you will move inside the term, read its moving-home clause before you sign rather than afterwards. It is one paragraph and it is the difference between a free exit and a bill. Compare what is actually available at your address with that in mind.

What the regulator does protect you on, which is real

Direct answer: Three genuine protections, none of which is a home-move waiver, and all of which are worth knowing precisely because they do exist.

The first is the one most often confused with the myth, and it is a real penalty-free exit, carried by General Condition C1.6: “Phone and broadband providers can change the terms of a contract but they must give you at least one month's notice and a right to exit the contract without penalty if the change does not benefit you.” Read what triggers it. Your provider changing the deal, not you changing address. If a price rise or a term change lands while you are planning a move, that is a live right and it is worth checking the notice you were sent, because it comes with a window.

The second is about prices and it changed the market: “Since January 2025, providers have been banned from offering new contracts that include price rises linked to inflation or that are set out in percentages.” The page being replaced ran this rule together with the moving-home question as though they were connected. They are not, and saying so keeps the useful rule useful.

The third is switching, and it is the genuine good news story of recent years: “Broadband and landline customers can now switch network under a new 'one touch' process, where they only have to contact their new provider.” It carries a benefit a lot of people still do not know about: “Our rules mean that under One Touch Switch, customers do not have to pay notice-period charges beyond the switch date, so no more paying for the old service after the new one starts.” And compensation comes attached: “Also, providers must compensate customers if things go wrong with the switch or they are left without a service for more than one working day.” What it does not do is end a contract early without charge, because ending a contract early is not switching. If your provider can serve the new address, moving away is a choice rather than a necessity, and the exit fee question comes straight back.

What to do, and in what order

Direct answer: Built round what you control, because the one thing nobody controls is when the move date settles.

Start with your own contract, before you ring anybody and before you look at a single deal. Search your terms for the words moving, move or address. The clause is usually short and near the end under a heading about moving home. It takes two minutes and it decides everything that follows, because it tells you whether you are in a conversation about a fee or a conversation about a term.

Then check the new address, on your own provider's checker and on at least one other. That answers the branch the whole page turns on and it also tells you what your options are if the answer is no. Only then is it worth ringing anybody, because by that point you know what you are asking for.

Give notice in writing as soon as the date is fixed. Notice periods across the ten run from fourteen days to thirty, and the contract and the help page often disagree, so use whichever is longer. BT's terms: “If you move home, let us know at least 14 days beforehand.” Virgin Media: “You must provide at least 30 days' notice to do this.” Putting the move date in writing is one of the few parts of a move that is entirely in your hands, and it puts the clock on the record.

If they cannot reach you, ask for the fee to be waived under the clause you found in step one, by number. If your provider is one of the three that charge, you now know that before it costs you rather than after, which is the whole point of doing this in the right order. And if you re-sign anywhere, read the term length before you agree, because that is the decision that is genuinely hard to undo.

How to find the clause yourself, whoever you are with

Direct answer: Ten providers were read in full for this page. There are far more than ten, and the method works for all of them.

Start with the terms rather than the help pages, because that is where the answer lives. Eight of the ten providers on this page put it nowhere else. Search the document for the word moving, then for move, then for address. In every one of the ten the clause sat under a heading that said moving home in plain words, usually near the end, and usually about a paragraph long.

Read for two things and ignore everything else. First, what happens if they cannot serve the new address: look for early termination, exit fee, termination fee, early disconnection or a phrase like will not have to pay. Second, what happens to your minimum term: look for minimum period, minimum term, new agreement or continues. Those two answers are the whole of it.

Note the document as well as the number. Several providers publish more than one set of terms on the same page, one for broadband and one for phone, and the clause numbers repeat across them. Writing down “clause 9.4 of the broadband service terms” rather than “clause 9.4” is the difference between a letter that lands and a letter that gets answered with the wrong document.

If there is nothing there at all, that is an answer too, and a more useful one than it sounds. Ask customer services for the clause number in writing and ask them to quote its wording. A company that cannot point at its own term is in a weak position to enforce it, and the request is a perfectly reasonable one to make. If nothing is published and nothing is in your contract, ask for the fee to be waived as a matter of discretion, and keep the answer whichever way it goes.

Broadband at your new postcode

Direct answer: A move is the one moment when switching costs you nothing extra, because you are already changing everything else.

Whatever your clause says, it is worth knowing what the new address can actually get before you decide to take your current service with you. New-customer pricing is usually better than the price you have drifted onto, and a street that was on copper when you last looked may well be on full fibre now.

And if you do switch rather than transfer, One Touch Switch handles the cancellation for you: “Our rules mean that under One Touch Switch, customers do not have to pay notice-period charges beyond the switch date, so no more paying for the old service after the new one starts.” That is a real saving and it is the part of a move that used to cost people a month of paying twice.

What this page used to say, and why it changed

Direct answer: Four corrections, and the first one was the whole argument of the page.

This page has been on the site since 28 September 2026 in one form or another and it has been read a great deal. Publishing the corrections rather than quietly editing them is the only way a reader can tell whether the version they acted on last year was the wrong one. If you rang your provider and quoted General Condition C7 because of something you read here, the first entry is an apology as well as a correction.