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The price of Netflix for new subscribers will increase to £6.99 per month but existing members will continue to pay the same for now. Reuters

Netflix has announced that its monthly subscription price in the UK will increase by £1 to £6.99 for new customers.

Existing customers will continue to pay £5.99 a month, however this is also likely to rise in 2016. Plans for a "one or two dollar" price increase were first announced by Netflix last month in a letter to shareholders.

Netflix is still listing its sign-up subscription fee as £5.99 on its website, though this is likely to change shortly.

"As a thank you for being a member of Netflix already, we guarantee that your plan and price will not change for two years," Netflix said in an email to customers. "Price is guaranteed so long as you remain a member on your current plan."

New subscribers in mainland Europe will also see a price increase in membership, rising from €7.99 to €8.99, while reports from Netflix customers in the US on social media suggest that the price is rising from $7.99 to $8.99.

More Ultra HD content

Netflix has cited the desire to add more films and televsion shows to its streaming service as the reason for the price increase, some of which may be coming in Ultra HD (previously known as 4K).

Ultra HD has a resolution of 3840 x 2160, giving it four times as many pixels as full HD screens, and has been hailed as the next big thing in consumer electronics. The latest televsions from Samsung, Sony, LG and Bang and Olufsen are all Ultra HD capable.

Following the launch of House of Cards in 4K earlier this month, Netflix has also confirmed that it plans to release more Ultra HD 4K content, starting with Breaking Bad in June.

Greg Peters, chief streaming and partnerships officer at Netflix, said: "You'll see us license more and more content. So we'll do Breaking Bad, but we'll also do all of the Originals that make sense that have a format or style that benefit from that better video quality."