Study Claims Half of Brits Face Broadband Disruptions Twice a Month or More
Mobile and internet provider giffgaff has today published the results of a new 3Gem survey of 2,000 UK adults (conducted during Sept 2025), which claims to have found that 53% of respondents face “broadband disruptions” at least twice a month and the average Brit spends nearly 50 hours a year troubleshooting poor internet connectivity.
The survey, which later confusingly indicated that the 53% figure referred to people who “suffer regular problems with their WiFi“, identifies that the top frustrations experienced by respondents include frozen work calls (17%), lost shopping orders (13%) and films or TV shows cutting out mid-stream (12%).
Meanwhile, people are said to be “going to extraordinary lengths to stay connected“, with 36% having left the house to find a signal – heading to cafés, friends’ homes, libraries and even supermarket car parks – and 6% even admitted parking outside an ex’s house to use their WiFi (this is technically illegal if done without permission).
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At home, coping tactics mean that 38% of respondents said they wander round the house trying to get a better signal, while 17% shout at the router (always super effective), and 8% drain their phone data (mobile broadband) by Tethering it to other devices. Finally, 31% say it’s too much hassle to switch provider (it’s actually now very easy), while a quarter think another provider wouldn’t be any better.
It’s almost like giffgaff have got a new home broadband service to promote, which of course they do (here).
Ash Schofield, CEO of giffgaff, said:
“Our research shows just how frustrating and disruptive unreliable broadband has become in people’s everyday lives. It’s clear that many feel stuck with a service they’re not happy with.
That’s why we invited over 500 people to help shape our offering, ensuring we deliver a service that is built around what people actually want. The launch of giffgaff’s full fibre broadband provides a flexible and reliable option with no fuss and no compromise.
Ditching bad broadband and switching to giffgaff could be the answer to a lot of people’s frustrations and is really simple to do.”
Leaving aside the obvious vested interest above, it’s worth caveating that this survey doesn’t make much distinction between problems caused by local network connectivity (e.g. bad configuration, variable WiFi between rooms etc.) and the physical broadband connection from an ISP. Similarly, some of the issues complained about (e.g. lost shopping orders), could just as easily be the fault of a remote internet website or service.
We should point out that not every person has the necessary skills to correctly identity and diagnose the cause of internet or network connection issues. As usual, opinion surveys like this should always be taken with a pinch of salt, especially given the relatively small sample size involved.
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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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This poll result should be used by every company selling FTTP to get people to switch.
A lot of problems are with Wi-Fi, not the broadband service itself, either because providers supply naff routers, looking at you Zzoomm, or because the routers are placed in stupid places.
Even with FTTC and ADSL for that matter, how many people over the years I know that have had problems and I moved their router and problems solved, unless they were using Talk talk on ADSL, and they still had problems 🙂
As much as I hate Openreach/BT, I was on Plusnet for nearly 9 years and in those 9 years, had one major problem, which was Openreach and maybe a few slow-downs. Been on FTTP for over 2 years, had one major problem at the start, which was when someone cut though some fibre and a small problem a month ago, which they solved in a couple of hours.
So for the most part broadband is pretty reliable these days, FTTC as long as the person is not too far away from cabinet and FTTP.
It is people expecting too much from Wi-Fi. 2.4Ghz, may have been slower than 5Ghz, but it works better though walls.
Myself, I avoid Wi-Fi if I can.
@Ad47uk. Have to agree, better wired if you can. I think a lot of routers do tend to become unstable when you connect too many devices to them via Wifi, especially when you have devices that have heavy data loads.
Ad47uk – 100% – so many people have the router in a terrible place, and they hope it will work.
If i left my router in the place where my connection socket is, it would be in a cupboard in the hallway where the washing machine is. Living in a new build, they didn’t even put ethernet in – i have phone sockets that i have no idea why they didn’t run ethernet instead!
so, a cable it is to move my own router, not the s*** supplied one into the living room, and it all works.
I can honestly say that in the last 4 years of BT FTTP I have had 1 1/2 hour daytime outage with the LOS light on the ONT coming on but that’s been it.
> 38% of respondents said they wander round the house trying to get a better signal
I assume these are the respondents who doesn’t know the difference between broadband and Wifi. (Also, Talktalk marketing’s target group.)
> while 17% shout at the router (always super effective)
Mark, you made me laugh here.
Nope. Don’t believe it. Not a word. I’m quite prepared to believe that the average person is a bit dim (and 50% are even worse) but this is just a marketing department fairy story.
Before I had FTTP (just over 2 years ago now) I would get at least 1 connection drop a week. Sometime in the off hours (1-2am) My VDSL connection would drop sync from the cab at the end of the road.
Since switching to FTTP 2 years I’ve had 2 outages, 1) Openreach’s gear decided I was no longer a customer for some reason a couple of weeks after first signing up to FTTP and stopped serving me, That took a week to fix with a number of call outs, turns out a reboot of the OLT fixed it (was just annoying to be out of service for a week because someone needed to turn something off and on again!).
The other was when I just changed my plan because of brsk’s black friday sale. I was down for ALMOST A FULL MINUTE after pushing the upgrade button! I’ve written to my MP to ensure this never happens again!
Things go belly up, it is a fact of life, but how long they take to sort out the problem and how well they communicate is what counts. The problem is, with more and more relying on this stuff, it needs to more reliable and people need to realise that Wi-Fi for the most part is naff and in the U.K most of our houses don’t have wood for the internal walls. A fair few people I know live in houses that Victorian or older, super thick walls.
What worries me is that when we have to rely on this stuff 100%, and that is mobile as well, and it goes down, then we are stuffed. Hopefully that will not happen for many years yet and I am not around when it does. I like some back up.
Most consumers do not know the difference between BB and WIFI. If they have a leaking radiator they would call a plumber and if the 0power keeps tripping they would call an electrician. But they don’t avail themselves of expertise even if offered free.
WIFI has progressed but people will not necessarily benefit is their house is full of cheap WIFI devices, old computers etc. not if there is a fundamental issue interfering with the signal. mesh can help but are often flawed fort the same reasons.
When it was first introduced the solution was a proper survey and cabled APs. I don’t think much has changed even if used alongside a Mesh.
The industry has created a plug and play environment where the positioning of routers is based on BB entry and power socket and then offer plug and play WIFI options often at additional cost.
Consumers will seemingly continue to have issues and their view of ISPs will be based on their house rather than the actual service.
Stop using GiffGaff then. 🙂
netomnia cut me off about once a month for “maintenance” or something
0 compensation offered. ever.
They all have to do maintenance. However, if the network is engineered correctly, and believe me it isn’t always possible, there should be alternate routes that can be used to redirect your traffic elsewhere whilst the devices in scope are … maintained.
They are lucky, twice a month, I get problems twice a day! Tried switching isp, others say no line available. I am paying for fibre 35, getting 8 or 9 gbs on a good day. Just had outreach engineer for 3rd time, “issue has been resolved ” no, it’s not! How are these people allowed to advertise “up to” some fantastic speed then you get 10% of what they claim
That’s just down to your line or cabling, most problems people have with “the internet” is down to something local unless you really do have a bad line.
First rule if you want a reliable connection buy your own hardware, your ISP will just supply whatever they can get the cheapest.
I’ve always used my own hardware, I was using pfsense but now I’m using opnsense (same hardware) and can count of one had how many outages I have had since the early 2000s.
I can’t stipulate enough just has bad and unreliable some ISP equipment is.
“I can’t stipulate enough just has bad and unreliable some ISP equipment is.”
This works both ways of course. This website’s forum has no shortage of examples where people have bought a router – thinking it’d automatically be better than the ISP supplied device – and it isn’t. It’s pretty hilarious when a £xxx router can’t deliver the multi gig PPPoE performance that the ISP box can. Some ISP devices can’t be beaten on specs without spending even more money. EE’s latest tri band wifi 7 router and mesh would be one example.
I’ve been on the other side of this and I have seen the customer complaints about how “crap” the ISP router is, only for an investigation to show that their third party mesh, network switch or some other device is causing the problem.
I used to be in to using my own equipment, running all Cisco kit at one point. Now I just use the ISP box, which in my case works wonderfully.
LOL, BT Ivor, you’d never convince me or pay me to use ISP provided garbage.
Yes, it costs more, but I use much better equipment and it’s all ready for 10gbps in it’s current form should BT get their A into G and actually deliver FTTP.
I’m on the list as of 2 years ago. Someone looked at the telegraph poles, 6 months later they got replaced. The day after, Networks Team van turned up, put a CBT at the top of the pole, then took it down again some months ago, never to be seen again. This is after the guys doing the telegraph pole replacement said “within a month at most for fibre”. It’s not even a difficult road or route, and the fibre trunk is already laid near by over a year ago (great big drum of fibre was used).
Pinch of salt indeed! I cannot remember when we last had an outage – and I check the real ISP charts almost daily, as I’m on A&A. We’ve certainly had speed degradation, but not a full drop. So that’s 9 years on Openreach FTTC and 2 glorious weeks on Openreach FTTP, in this city suburb about 1.5 miles from the exchange, without a blip that I can recall. I suspect the “Wi-Fi” is indeed the bigger cause of many of these reports…
I don’t entirely believe this. I did have a proper equipment fault with BT (at the cabinet) a few years ago, but even FTTC was pretty solid albeit with the odd (Smart Hub flashing orange) blip. With FTTP, it’s been very reliable. The odd blip (I suspect the root cause is typically an engineer messing about in a cabinet) is inevitable if you don’t have a fully redundant leased line setup.
The WiFi router placement mentioned by others here? I’m guilty – it is where I can put it (for now) and does cause the odd issue* in the the rooms with the most stuff between me and it.
* Usually solved by switching WiFi off and on, on the phone or tablet in question.
It depends what they are taking about, FTTP is usually pretty solid and rarely fails
A lot of issues are often down to user setup and particularly WiFi
I think if we’re counting lost shopping orders and frozen video and streaming as broadband disruption then that applies to just about anyone and everyone. A lot of the time that might not even be your fault.
Only twice. Lucky lucky people
Seems like there’s a bit of conflation going on here beyond the inability to recognise the difference between broadband and wifi. I sense the sin of omission and the comparison of apples (fttp/fttc) and bananas (4G/5G/FWA/satellite) in presenting a case. Apples are generally little affected by a bit of buffeting (run-of-the mill weather, contention, etc.) but bananas …
Not sure about apples and bananas, always thought it was apples and pears. 🙂