Until now, Telefónica Deutschland has been a safe bet for price-conscious mobile phone customers.
If you wanted it cheap, you quickly ended up with one of the brands of the O2 group, which a few years ago had taken over the most aggressively priced provider on the German market with E-Plus.
Now, of all things, the German subsidiary of the Spanish Telefónica is pushing ahead with the next round of prices: the basic tariffs for the group brands are to rise by up to 10 percent in the spring.
"More performance at the same price is - unlike in the past - no longer possible," said CEO Markus Haas to the "Handelsblatt".
However, there will be no “flat surcharges”, but the services covered will also be improved at the same time.
In addition to O2, the portfolio includes the Group's secondary brands Blau, Ortel Mobile and Ay Yildiz, as well as numerous partner brands such as Aldi Talk, Tchibo Mobil or Lebara, for which it is not yet clear whether there could also be price increases there.
Haas justified the step above all with the high investments in network expansion, with which companies are reacting to the increasing use of data.
Energy prices are also weighing on telecommunications companies.
As Haas said in an interview with the FAZ, electricity accounts for a "mid-single-digit percentage of running costs".
Deutsche Telekom has also discussed possible price increases, but does not give any figures or timetables.
Vodafone kept a low profile.
"We cannot make any statements about future developments in pricing," said a spokesman.
However, industry experts expect that Vodafone could also go up.