Moving and renting broadband: what a move actually costs, why the switching protection you have heard of does not cover it, and the deadline that decides all of it

The short version, and what it does not claim

Direct answer: Moving home is not switching, and the protection everybody has heard of does not cover it.

Switching broadband in Britain got genuinely better. One Touch Switch means one phone call to the company you want, and Ofcom's description is worth reading closely: “you will only need to contact your new home broadband provider to switch, and you won't need to speak to your current provider before making the move”. It applies right across the market, because “This will apply to all home broadband users, including cable and full-fibre customers.”

Moving house got none of that. A move is a different transaction in Ofcom's own rules, it happens at the address you are arriving at, and there is no equivalent mechanism for the one you are leaving. Ofcom's consumer guidance for movers is three tips, and Ofcom's moving-home guidance was published on 14 September 2021 and last updated on 5 July 2023, which is before One Touch Switch went live. It mentions One Touch Switch nowhere, early termination charges nowhere and notice periods nowhere.

Into that gap, the companies have written their own. Nine providers publish their own moving rules, and they disagree with each other on the fee, on whether the contract restarts, and on what happens if they cannot reach your new address. The striking thing is not that any of them is harsh. Mostly they are reasonable. The striking thing is that the same household, moving in the same week, gets a different answer depending on the logo on the bill.

None of this is sharp practice. A move genuinely is a different job from a switch, the engineers and the wayleaves are real, and most of these companies move most people without incident. What is missing is anybody telling you the rules before the week you need them.

This hub sits over ten guides, one for each of the common situations. The first tool below picks the two that are yours in about twenty seconds, or you can browse all ten.

Three tools: which guide, what deadline, what cost

Direct answer: Find your provider's published notice period, count back from your move date, and put that date in your calendar today. Every charge on this page is decided by whether you told them in time.

All three run entirely in your browser. There is no form to submit, no address to type and no request to any server: what you put in is worked out on the page and gone when you close the tab. Every figure they use is published by the company named, and where a company publishes nothing, they say so rather than estimating.

Why moving is not switching

Direct answer: One Touch Switch changes who supplies an address. Nothing covers somebody leaving one.

Start with what the good reform actually says. Ofcom: “Switching broadband is simple with One Touch Switch. Contact the provider you want to move to, and they will manage the switch for you.” For a household changing provider at the same address that is close to frictionless, and it was not always so.

Now read Ofcom's own moving-home page, which is the one a mover would find. Its single substantive sentence about the contract is “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.” Note the verb. Not switch: cancel. Ofcom's moving-home guidance was published on 14 September 2021 and last updated on 5 July 2023, which is before One Touch Switch went live. It mentions One Touch Switch nowhere, early termination charges nowhere and notice periods nowhere.

That is not an oversight, it is the structure. Ofcom's General Conditions define a Home-Move Request as “a request by an Inbound Customer or End-User to begin acquiring one or several Communications Services over the Target Line”. The Target Line is the line at the address you are moving to. The rules describe arriving somewhere in detail and leaving somewhere not at all, which is exactly why the cost of leaving is set by nine different sets of company terms rather than by one regulated process.

Citizens Advice is the body that addresses the gap most directly: “You should check if your provider offers the same service in your new area. If they do, you might have to pay a small fee to move the service to your new address.” Small is doing some work in that sentence. The published fees in this research run from nothing to £65.

What nine providers actually publish

Direct answer: Nine providers publish their own moving rules, and they disagree with each other on the fee, on whether the contract restarts, and on what happens if they cannot reach your new address.

Three columns, nine companies, every cell read on their own pages on 24 September 2026. Take them one at a time.

On cost, EE is free: “If you've got broadband with us, there are no activation or connection fees.” Hyperoptic is free in one specific case: “If you are moving within the same building, moving your Hyperoptic service is free of charge and can be done quickly.” Sky publishes “If you're a Sky VIP customer, your home move is free. If not, it will cost £50.” TalkTalk and Plusnet both charge, and both charge nothing if you re-contract, which is the next section. BT, Virgin Media, Vodafone and NOW publish that a charge may apply without publishing the amount. Virgin's terms say only “A service transfer fee may apply, please see the price guides for details”, and NOW at least commits to quoting it first: “We may charge you any costs we reasonably incur as a result of transferring your service to your new Address. We will tell you whether a charge applies and the amount of this charge before processing your move.”

On the contract clock, the same event has opposite consequences. Virgin Media: “your minimum period will continue (e.g. where your services are on a 12 month minimum period, if you move during month 7 of your minimum period, the remaining 5 months of your minimum period will apply)”. NOW: “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”. Against those, Vodafone's terms say “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” and Hyperoptic says “Provision of our services to you at your new home will usually be handled as if you are a new customer.” BT splits the difference in a way worth knowing if you still have a landline: “If you want telephone service at your new address, a new 12-month contract term will always apply for the telephone line.”, while “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. However, if the term on your broadband contract is less than three months, a new three-month contract will apply at your new address.”

And on notice, no two of the nine agree. Plusnet has the shortest cancellation period in this research: “We require 14 days' notice in order to cancel a residential account and 28 days' notice to cancel a business account.” NOW has the longest: “you must either give us at least 31 days' notice or place an order with another provider who can provide broadband and home telephone calls on your existing Line”. Thirty-one days rather than thirty is the kind of difference that costs a household an extra month of line rental, and it is published rather than concealed. The planner above counts back from your move date using whichever period applies to you.

The fee for staying loyal

Direct answer: Two providers charge you to keep your contract and nothing to start a new one, so on a move the loyal option is the expensive one.

This is the finding on this page least likely to be written anywhere else, and both halves of it are published by the companies themselves.

TalkTalk: “If you want to carry over your existing contract there'll be a charge of £60 for moving your services. However if you're starting a brand new contract at your new property you wont face any additional fees.” What the £60 buys is continuity: “If you're currently on one of our plans, you'll be able to keep your current contract.” Plusnet, five pounds dearer and identical in shape: “We won't charge you for moving home if you take out a new contract. However, if you stay on your existing contract you may be charged a home move fee of £65”

Nobody designed that to be unfair. It is what happens when a company prices a move as an administrative job and prices a new sale at nothing because a new sale is worth having. The effect, though, is that the household which keeps the arrangement it already has pays, and the household that signs up for another two years does not.

Citizens Advice adds the line that applies to every fee on this page: “It's worth trying to explain your situation to your provider - they might reduce or remove any fee.” A published fee is a starting position.

The escape hatch that is not universal

Direct answer: Everybody believes that if a provider cannot reach the new address you walk away free. Four publish exactly that, one publishes a conditional version, one grants the right without calling it free, and three publish nothing about it at all.

Almost everybody believes that if their provider cannot reach the new address, they walk away without paying. For four of the nine that belief is exactly right, and published in plain words.

BT's terms, clause 39: “You will not have to pay this charge in the event that you move home and we are unable to provide the service at your new UK address.” Sky: “In the event we're not available at your new address, you'll be able to cancel when you move with no exit fees.” Virgin Media's terms, where it cannot provide the same services: “you can cancel your services and you will not need to pay an early disconnection fee”. EE lists among the cases where no early termination charge is payable: “you move home and we cannot provide the price plan service at your new UK address”

Vodafone's version is real but conditional, and the conditions are the point: “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.” Subject to is doing the work there. NOW publishes a right to end the contract in that situation without saying anywhere that it is free of charge, which is a meaningfully weaker thing.

Moving outside a network entirely is handled differently again. Virgin Media publishes a credit-back mechanism rather than a straight waiver, requiring evidence of the new address within thirty days. It is a reasonable rule and it is one more thing that only exists in the terms.

Renting: the right that is not a right

Direct answer: There is no statutory right for a tenant to have fibre installed. The law passed in 2021 gives operators a route through the courts where a landlord will not answer; it gives the tenant nothing to enforce.

The private rented sector is not a niche: “In 2024-25, the private rented sector accounted for 4.7 million or 19% of households.” And it is concentrated where the flats are, which is where the permission problem lives: “In 2024-25, 28% of households in London were private renters, compared to 17% in the rest of England.”

The Telecommunications Infrastructure (Leasehold Property) Act 2021 is regularly described as giving tenants a right to fibre. Read what it actually creates: “a fasttrack route by which a telecommunications operator may apply to a court for an order (a 'Part 4A order') granting rights to access to a 'multiple-dwelling unit'”. An operator, a court, a multiple-dwelling unit. None of those words is the tenant.

And it bites only in one situation. The Government's guidance: “Operators can use the Part 4A process to access blocks of flats and apartments if a service has been requested by a tenant, but a landlord of connected land is repeatedly unresponsive to requests for access.” Two limits sit inside that sentence and both matter. Blocks of flats, not a rented house. And a landlord who does not answer, not a landlord who answers and refuses.

So the published default stands, and Openreach states it plainly to landlords: “You must give permission before any Full Fibre installation work can begin.” In a block the person who has to agree is frequently not the person you rent from: “Before we can begin installation to blocks of flats and apartments, we'll need permission from the Freeholder or Managing Agent, also known as a wayleave.” A wayleave is “A written legal agreement between us and the land or property owner. It gives us permission to install, maintain or repair the network equipment that's on their property.”

If you are renting with other people, one more thing has to be agreed before anybody orders anything: no UK provider publishes a way to put two people on one broadband account, so the name on the bill is the person liable for all of it, including the exit charge. Our house shares guide covers the arrangements that actually work.

What you are owed when it goes wrong

Direct answer: A missed go-live date is the commonest thing that goes wrong on a move, and there is a published rate for it.

Ofcom's automatic compensation scheme pays without you having to argue, and the rates published as at 24 September 2026 are “£6.46 for each calendar day of delay” where a provider promises to start a service on a date and fails to, “£32.31 per missed appointment” for an engineer who does not turn up or cancels on under 24 hours' notice, and “£10.34 for each calendar day the service is not repaired” for each day of a total loss of service once two working days have passed.

Two caveats belong with that and neither is usually mentioned. The scheme is voluntary rather than universal: BT, EE, Hyperoptic, Plusnet, Sky (including NOW Broadband), TalkTalk, Utility Warehouse, Virgin Media, Vodafone and Zen Internet are signed up to Ofcom's automatic compensation scheme. It is voluntary, so a provider outside that list owes none of it. And Ofcom publishes no statement on whether automatic compensation applies when a customer is moving home. A move is not among its published exclusions, and it is not named as covered either.

One more piece of paper is worth asking for if a move re-contracts you. Ofcom requires your provider to give you “a one-page (or three-page for bundled services) contract summary in writing, that includes key information, such as charges, the length of the contract and the process for cancelling” before you are bound. On a home move that document is where a new minimum term would appear, and reading its length takes about ten seconds.

The ten guides in this series

Direct answer: Ten guides, one for each common situation. The router at the top picks yours in four questions.

Alongside these, the questions next door: what a full house actually needs, why a contract outlives a tenancy, what a pensioner household is entitled to and which technology to buy.

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