BT TV is back. Less than three years after BT retired the name and moved its TV customers over to EE TV, it has switched BT broadband customers back to BT TV, as of October 15.
If you’re one of them, your box, your package and your price are the same as they were on October 14. What’s new is the logo on screen, the colours of the interface and, according to BT, the colour of the light on the front of the box.
BT calls the launch “an important milestone for the BT brand”. It’s hard not to raise an eyebrow at that, having watched the same company make the opposite move, with just as much fanfare, back in 2023.
But for one group of customers, this may be more than a lick of paint, and new deals are available for anyone thinking of joining.
Didn’t We Just Do This?
If this feels familiar, it’s because we’ve watched it happen in reverse. In 2022, BT announced that EE, the mobile network it owns, would become its main brand for home broadband and TV as well as mobile.
In October 2023, EE unveiled its new era with a launch that went well beyond TV: a new EE ID account, a gaming shop, home security, even insurance, plus faster broadband. At the heart of it was EE TV, the service that would replace BT TV, complete with a custom Apple TV 4K box.
On December 6, 2023, BT TV customers were moved over automatically. The email BT sent at the time promised that “your service, any recordings you have, and the price you pay won’t change”.
And EE TV launched with BT TV’s prices, the same bundles, and the same boxes. The biggest rename was the top bundle, which went from VIP to Full Works.
2023 was a big year for retiring BT names. That summer, BT Sport also disappeared, when BT’s sports channels became TNT Sports after merging with Warner Bros. Discovery’s Eurosport (which prompted one person on social media to suggest BT’s next bright idea: launch a sports channel, and maybe call it… BT Sport).
BT’s Explanation (Sort Of)
BT announced the new, 2026 BT TV in September, saying it would be available from October 15.
Its announcement describes the launch as “completing its connected offering across broadband, TV and mobile”, and as part of BT’s “broader strategic commitment of serving different customer needs through its family of brands”.
On launch day, BT followed up with a blog post by Matt Hughes, Marketing and Commercial Director, Consumer, under the title “BT TV – Simply Brilliant”.
It cites research suggesting Brits spend around 182 hours a year searching for something to watch, and pitches BT TV as the answer: live TV, streaming services and sport in one place, recording, one search across everything, and packages you can switch month to month.
All of which is a pretty good description of what EE TV offered on October 14.
What neither the announcement nor the blog does is mention EE, let alone explain why the name is changing back.
The announcement also claims BT TV is “one of the only providers” bringing live sport, live TV and streaming together in one place, which Sky and Virgin Media may have something to say about.
The clearest explanation, perhaps, came on BT’s community forum, where customers were told the change was a response to feedback: customers liked the BT brand, and didn’t like moving to something that felt unfamiliar.
So the choice now is BT broadband with BT TV, or EE broadband with EE TV.
The only thing that changes is the branding, meaning the light on the front of the box and the logo and colours of the interface.
What Changes For You
If you have BT broadband and EE TV, you’ve been moved to BT TV automatically, and there’s nothing you need to do. Your boxes are now the BT TV Box Pro and BT TV Box Edge, and your package, contract and price stay as they were.
One customer who received BT’s email about the switch says it promised no difference to what they can do, apart from the brand.
If you have EE broadband, nothing changes at all. EE TV carries on under the EE name.
Both services are owned by BT Group and are almost identical.
The exception is the custom Apple TV 4K box, the one EE made such a fuss about in 2023. It isn’t part of BT TV: according to BT, the custom Apple TV box is only available with EE TV.
Yet BT broadband customers could get that box in the past, for example in BT’s Black Friday deals last year, where each of the discounted bundles came with a choice of the Box Pro or the Apple TV 4K box.
So what happens to BT broadband customers who watch on one now? We’ve asked BT, and will update this article when we hear back.
Over on the forum, the reaction to this change has mostly been a collective shrug. One customer said “BT seem to have an identity crisis”, while others got into a lengthy debate about whether the light on their box was blue, aqua or purple.
Others took the chance to ask about the things they’d actually like to see changed, such as Sky Sports in 4K, or fixes for recordings that still occasionally fail because of glitches in the TV guide (although regulars say that has improved).
Neither is solved by a new logo.
The BT TV Plans And Current Deals
BT TV is only available to BT broadband customers, and its price is added to your broadband bill. The packages and their contents haven’t changed since EE TV’s September shake-up, which introduced a cheaper entry package without recording.
These are the five plans:
- Entertainment: Netflix Standard with Ads and NOW Entertainment, Sky’s streaming service with channels such as Sky Atlantic. Comes with the BT TV Box Edge, which can’t record.
- Entertainment Plus: Netflix Standard with Ads and NOW Entertainment & HBO Max (Basic with Ads), with the BT TV Box Pro recorder.
- Sport: All the TNT Sports channels in HD, plus TNT Sports on HBO Max, with the Box Pro.
- Sport Plus: TNT Sports plus the Sky Sports channels through NOW Sports in HD, with the Box Pro.
- Full Works: NOW Entertainment & HBO Max, NOW Cinema, Netflix Standard (without adverts), NOW Sports, TNT Sports and NOW Boost, with the Box Pro.
All five come with the most popular free-to-air channels, on 24-month contracts, with nothing to pay upfront. You can switch between plans every 30 days, until the last three months of your contract.
And as with most broadband and TV providers, prices rise during your contract. BT TV plans go up by £2/month every March 31, so this is what new customers pay today:
| Plan | Box | Monthly price now | From March 31, 2027 | From March 31, 2028 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Entertainment | Edge | £15 | £17 | £19 |
| Entertainment Plus | Pro | £19 | £21 | £23 |
| Sport | Pro | £5 for 3 months, then £27 | £29 | £31 |
| Sport Plus | Pro | £30 for 3 months, then £55 | £57 | £59 |
| Full Works | Pro | £88 | £90 | £92 |
The Entertainment, Entertainment Plus and Sport offers end on October 22, according to the countdown on BT’s site.
The launch offers are a little less generous than what EE TV was offering last month. Entertainment was £10/month in September, and is now £15, against a standard price of £17, so the discount is now £2/month. Entertainment Plus is £19, up from September’s £18 offer, against its standard £22.
Sport is unchanged, while Sport Plus gets a new offer: £30/month for the first three months, saving £75 before it returns to £55.
Sports fans may have spotted that earlier this week, NOW split its Sky Sports membership into three, so subscribers going direct can now pay for just the football, just the other sports, or the full package.
It doesn’t affect BT TV, at least for now: Sport Plus and Full Works customers continue to get the full Sky Sports line-up.
That full line-up is part of what makes Sport Plus decent value. Going direct, NOW’s All Sky Sports costs £27.99/month on a 12-month saver, plus £6/month for Boost to get Full HD, and TNT Sports on HBO Max is another £25.99/month on its own 12-month saver.
That’s £59.98/month, against Sport Plus at £55, although BT’s price comes with a 24-month contract and requires BT broadband.
If you want BT TV in another room, an extra Box Edge costs £10/month. When EE TV launched in 2023, up to two extra boxes were included at no extra cost.
As You Were
So, other than confusing customers for the second time in three years, the return of BT TV changes very little.
If you’re a BT broadband customer, your TV service now has a different name and a different-coloured light, and everything else carries on. If you’re with EE, you won’t notice anything at all.
And if you’re thinking of joining, the name on the box matters a lot less than what’s in the plan. The cheapest Entertainment package still comes with a box that can’t record, and every plan still rises each March.
As you were.
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