PlusNet, Virgin Media and Sky Top 2015 UK Home Broadband ISP Survey

The results from the annual Broadband Genie 2015 survey have been announced, which saw PlusNet come top in four of the five survey categories (overall satisfaction score of 76%) to secure the Best Broadband Provider award. But Virgin Media (75%) and Sky Broadband (73%) weren’t far behind.

The Broadband Genie survey used information collected from 4,400 survey responses, as well as the data from 5.7 million speed tests conducted in 2014 and a judging panel to help them decide this year’s winners. The panel included Tom Fellowes (CEO of business ISP Spitfire), Matthew Evans (Policy Manager for the Broadband Stakeholder’s Group) and Chris Marling (Genie Ventures’ senior editor).

As usual the survey asked respondents to rate ISPs based on their performance across a range of categories including customer care, tech support, connection reliability and satisfaction with service speeds. Broadly speaking the results were as follows, with PlusNet securing the lion’s share of praise.

The Home Broadband Survey 2015 Awards

Customer Care
78% PlusNet
73% Sky Broadband
71% Virgin Media
66% BT
60% EE
58% TalkTalk

Broadband Reliability
83% PlusNet
78% Sky Broadband
78% Virgin Media
75% BT
71% TalkTalk
66% EE

Speed Satisfaction
81% Virgin Media
73% PlusNet
73% BT
71% Sky Broadband
65% TalkTalk
60% EE

Technical Support
73% PlusNet
70% Sky Broadband
70% Virgin Media
60% BT
54% EE
53% TalkTalk

Respondents were also asked whether they would recommend their ISP and 74% of PlusNet’s customers said yes, while 73% did the same for Virgin Media, 71% for Sky, 69% for BT, 64% for TalkTalk and only 61% felt comfortable enough to recommend EE.

Elsewhere the Panel Nominated Awards voted PlusNet as the Best Budget Provider, while Sky Broadband won the Best Bundled Provider award and Relish (London focused fixed wireless ISP) was voted the Most Innovative Provider.

Finally, Virgin Media unsurprisingly came top of the speedtest study, which found that they delivered an average Internet download speed of 31.95Mbps (Megabits per second) which, thanks to their cable platform, was way above BT’s 16.18Mbps in the runner-up spot.

As usual such surveys only tend to focus on the biggest broadband providers and sadly this ignores the often superior support and service quality of smaller ISPs. As such the results should always be taken with a pinch of salt, although among the big ISPs it’s now quite normal to see PlusNet, Sky and Virgin running ahead of BT, TalkTalk and EE.