[tvtimes]

Price rises are inevitable - they go up every year and all the paytv and broadband providers do it.
VM's last price was last August, I think? So it is purely coincidental, they just wouldn't have dared announcing a price rise while they were dealing with the loss of UKTV - that really would have been a insult to injury if they had and their retentions agents were getting enough abuse as it was.