Which? Awards the Best and Worst UK Mobile Operators for H1 2025
Consumer magazine Which? has published the results from their latest UK mobile network satisfaction survey, which questioned 4,153 adults in January 2025 about their chosen operators. Overall, Smarty topped the table with a customer satisfaction score of 82%, while Three UK placed last on just 62%.
The survey itself typically questioned respondents about their experiences across several categories, including network reliability, overall value for money, customer service in general, the speed/ease of getting in touch, incentives, technical support, roaming value for money, download speeds (mobile broadband), communication frequency and quality.
In addition, the survey also ranked each provider by “Customer Score“, which is based on the respondent’s satisfaction and their likelihood to recommend the service. One catch with a survey of this limited size is that they needed at least 50 responses to include a survey result, and thus the sample sizes for some of these operators is considerably lower (less credible) than others. For example, O2 received 804 responses, while 1p Mobile got 54.
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Several operators were also awarded the Which? ‘Recommended Provider‘ (WRP) status, which requires them to offer more than just great service to customers and they must also be able to offer prices that are lower than the market average. As for those with the ‘Great Value‘ status, this reflects networks that offer SIM-only deals that are significantly cheaper than the market average, for a good amount of data (mobile broadband).
As usual, most of the largest mobile network operators could all be found near the bottom of Which?’s table, while the top portion was dominated by smaller virtual (MVNO) operators that harness the same networks as the primary / biggest operators. The highest ranked of the primary operators was EE, which scored 71%.
Which? 2025 UK Mobile Awards Results (Customer Score)
RECOMMENDED PROVIDER, Great Value
Smarty 82%RECOMMENDED PROVIDER
Voxi 81%RECOMMENDED PROVIDER, Great Value
Talkmobile 80%RECOMMENDED PROVIDER
Lebara 79%Tesco Mobile 79%
RECOMMENDED PROVIDER
Giffgaff 77%Great Value
1p Mobile 71%Great Value
Asda 71%EE 71%
Sky Mobile 71%
Great Value
iD Mobile 71%Vodafone 69%
BT Mobile 68% (no longer available to new customers)
O2 68%
Lyca Mobile 64%
Three UK 63%
Mark is a professional technology writer, IT consultant and computer engineer from Dorset (England), he also founded ISPreview in 1999 and enjoys analysing the latest telecoms and broadband developments. Find me on X (Twitter), Mastodon, Facebook, BlueSky, Threads.net and Linkedin.
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Amazing that Smarty should come top and 3 bottom when they’re essentially siblings. Suggests to me that it’s the sim only customers are the most satisfied, an area in which the MVNOs certainly are better value than the main networks and don’t tie you into a long contract.
Or its the customer service? Three has the worst customer service on a par with TalkTalk. Whereas Smarty has great customer service.
I use Smarty and for what I need the price is good, £5 a month for 4GB, unlimited calls and text.
I don’t know about customer service as have not any need to contact them, for the last couple of years, they have kept me on the same price.
So for me, it is good value, I could get another GB for another quid, but no point since I don’t even use half of the 4GB I have
EE great value haha
They started being more aggressive with their offers, especially if you have broadband. The other day there was an offer at a store here, unlimited for £13 with a 100Mbps speed cap. That’s not bad.
I have got fantastic value from 1P Mobile, I grabbed one of their permanent offers and have 50GB as month for £10. I would have Smarty as my main number but sadly their signal just isn’t as strong. I get EE’s 5G signal in my area, may not be the full proper 5G but it is fast enough for around 100MBPS in my home so good enough for a backup service, and my phone use.
Sadly Smarty works well enough for me, but if I walk the dog I can get black spots still, it varies if these occur or not, plus I can still get a 3G signal on them in some spots. If I could get a decent continuous signal I would use them with my main number as I prefer their customer service system and their branding so their App for instance is pretty good. Plus Smarty do offer fantastic value also.
Three maybe last on this which ‘award’ but it looks like Three is the most mapped network on Cellmapper 🙂
Why is it I cannot get from WHICH a Broadband and tv package only comparison?