Virgin Media and Plusnet Come Top in 2017 Customer Survey of UK ISPs
Comparison site Cable has published the winners of a huge new ISP survey, which interviewed 16,753 UK broadband customers to identify the best providers via five categories (reliability, value for money, customer service, speed and switching). Virgin Media and Plusnet came top.
Customers were asked by Cable.co.uk to rate their existing broadband provider by giving them a score for each category, which was done on a scale of 1 to 10 (i.e. 1 is “completely fails / failed to meet my expectations” and 10 is “hugely exceeds / exceeded my expectations“).
Sadly the the results only cover the largest providers, which the site said is because those ISPs with fewer than 400 responses were removed “as a result of normal error margins producing adverse effects within such a huge sample.” The data itself was collected by Atomik Research during a three-week period starting from 5th Oct 2017.
The results are bad news for TalkTalk, which came bottom in three out of the five categories.
| Mean Average of All Categories | |
| Plusnet | 7.16 |
| Virgin Media | 7.15 |
| Sky Broadband | 7 |
| Vodafone | 6.77 |
| EE | 6.76 |
| BT | 6.71 |
| TalkTalk | 6.57 |
| Customer service | |
| Plusnet | 7.15 |
| Sky Broadband | 6.92 |
| Virgin Media | 6.9 |
| Vodafone | 6.61 |
| EE | 6.59 |
| BT | 6.42 |
| TalkTalk | 6.09 |
| Value for money | |
| Plusnet | 7.14 |
| TalkTalk | 6.86 |
| EE | 6.85 |
| Sky Broadband | 6.73 |
| Vodafone | 6.66 |
| Virgin Media | 6.56 |
| BT | 6.33 |
| Speed | |
| Virgin Media | 7.4 |
| Vodafone | 6.94 |
| Sky Broadband | 6.77 |
| Plusnet | 6.77 |
| BT | 6.71 |
| EE | 6.5 |
| TalkTalk | 6.26 |
| Reliability of service | |
| Virgin Media | 7.65 |
| Sky Broadband | 7.32 |
| Plusnet | 7.3 |
| BT | 7.25 |
| EE | 6.92 |
| Vodafone | 6.81 |
| TalkTalk | 6.69 |
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 Twitter, Google+, Facebook and Linkedin.
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The Virgin Media reviewed must be different from the Virgin Media Business that I have just had the misfortune of signing up for, they bring incompetence and poor service to a whole new level.
Thousands of others disagree
I suspect they’ve only included Virgin Media residential, while VMB would be viewed as a different ISP with a different customer base and products.
Ouch if that is the case and its just residential sides of the businesses concerned it makes BT and Talk Talk look even worse.
If Plusnet, with customer service waiting times in excess of 30 minutes are top, how bad are the others!
The suppression ISPs with less than 400 responses looks very suspicious as it excludes the likes of B4RN, Gigaclear, Hyperoptic etc. I’d love to see the rationale for this.
16,753 customers out of how many millions of broadband users?
Hardly worth the paper it’s written on. Oh wait…
Are you trying to say if they surveyed more users the results for each ISP would be better or worse?
Representative samples: what are they, and how do they work?
How Plusnet are top for service is beyond me. Just look at the complaints on the PN forum. Also their webmail service has been a joke for over a year with little or no improvement. I agree the costs are very low but just wait till you have a problem – you will tear your hair out trying to get it resolved.
They have a large customer base and when people aren’t happy, they voice this on forums and social media.
Those who are happy very rarely say anything as they have no need.
I’m a happy Plusnet user though.
Errr does that not apply to all ISPs in the list then?
@alegeek – why doesn’t ISP’s get customers opinions then, send emails, pop ups on online account/billing, courtesy calls that ask the simple question of “are you happy”…
ISP’s don’t work hard enough to get their customers opinion and honestly I see a lot why they wouldn’t..
There’s no proof that happy customers are the only ones that don’t say anything, I know many that have issues but don’t do nothing about it.
With plus net the waiting time of 30 minutes plus, then a coded input for the service you want is hardly brilliant. If you are buying you are strait through. Then there 18 month contracts etc. Plus £50 call out fee.
Every time this reports come up I almost taste BS.
I trust nothing anymore.