The communications are preparing to officially raise their prices, but this escalation has already been undertaken since the end of 2022. The CPI for December, collected by the INE and also the rate comparators in the sector, says so.

Telephony, until recently a redoubt of deflation in a year of widespread higher prices, has also begun to transfer increases to its customers.

Large operators such as Telefónica, Orange, Vodafone or MásMóvil have changed the pace and, from this January, the rates will increase.

The INE exposes that the Communications category has risen by 0.005% in December, a residual increase of course, but the first since last April for the official statistical data.

The figure is a signal in which more exhaustive analyzes abound, such as this one from Ysi, which EL MUNDO has accessed: of the 107 operators that this comparator examines, in December 29 price drops have been observed compared to 79 increases, so that The companies are already inclined to the increases, which they had been renouncing despite the pressure on their costs.

In fact, in November the trend was already pointing: 16 decreases and 45 increases in rates in the month.

Previously, price movements were barely noticeable and, if they existed, they were downward, despite the fact that inflation marked the year 2022 in Spain, starting with energy and inevitably impacting the costs of these companies linked to technology and to data management.

In October Ysi located 19 price drops for only 2 increases;

in November, there was a turnaround that will soon become even more evident if possible.

This Thursday,

Orange

informed its customers that as of March 12 it will increase its rates again: by 2 euros for all its fiber and mobile packages and by 5 euros for those that include soccer channels.

Orange had already raised prices last August, an increase between 6% and 7% that was also concentrated in its

convergent

packs .

MásMóvil

has applied a rise in December, little media coverage but coincident with the new path towards higher rates.

This operator has also focused increases on its commercial packages, as well as on additional lines, and, without specifying any data on the increase, this company calculates that the measure only impacts 20% of all its lines.

Telefónica

's prices have

also increased, precisely since this Friday, January 13, when the first bills for this month began to be received.

The increase can reach 14 euros as contracted and, on average, they would remain at 6.8%, estimates the Spanish multinational.

According to another comparator, Kelisto, the internet and mobile rates linked to Movistar will rise by 6.33% on average, (4.67 euros per month).

Of course, since last Wednesday, Movistar offers unlimited data to all its mobile lines, except for prepaid ones: in this way, the navigation of customers who exceed the stipulated limit will not be interrupted, because they will have 2 megabits per second (Mbps ) to access the Internet, a reduced but "reasonable and sufficient" speed, as Telefónica recalled this week.

At

Vodafone

,

fiber and mobile packages will rise 8% (5.28 euros per month) from January 22, Kelisto predicts

.

However, the operator calculates that its increases will have an average of 6.5%, taking as a reference the average CPI from October 2021 to September 2022. "Companies have withdrawn their discounts, and have already removed their cheapest plans" Kelisto points out about the rest of the sector: "These measures are making the price of access to tariffs between 9% and 45% more expensive."

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