Winners of the 2019 ISPA UK ISP Internet Industry Awards Revealed

The UK Internet Service Providers Association (ISPA) last night confirmed the winners of their 21st annual 2019 internet industry awards, which among other categories saw Hull provider KCOM scoop the win for “Best Consumer ISP” and altnet FTTH provider TrueSpeed come out top as the “Best Rural Broadband” ISP.

As usual the awards, which were this year been held at the Sheraton Grand Park Lane Hotel in London, are all independently judged by a “panel of industry experts” (people from Jisc, Cloudflare, Point Topic, Accenture etc.), while broadband ISPs, web hosts and VoIP providers underwent some “technical testing” (e.g. downstream / upstream throughput, HTTP speed, DNS lookup time and ping times etc.).

Meanwhile this year’s event also added two new categories for “Best Customer Solution” (i.e. recognises an ISP that has delivered a particularly innovative technological solution to a complex customer issue) – won by BT – and “Best Infrastructure Provider” (i.e. recognises the growing band of companies revolutionising the communications infrastructure) – won by Openreach for their Fibre First strategy (Cityfibre were highly commended).

We think Hyperoptic also deserves a big mention for picking up both the “Best Business ISP” and “Best Customer Service” awards. Rarely does the annual ISPA Awards event pass without them winning something and it tends to be well deserved.

Andrew Glover, ISPA Awards Chair of Judges, said:

“I think a huge congratulations are in order for all of the winners of the 21st Annual ISPA Awards.

The internet sector has now become fully mainstream and is one of the biggest drivers of innovation, growth and overall human satisfaction. Internet related issues now top the list of policy challenges facing policymakers in the UK and across the world.

Whether the issue is full-fibre broadband or online safety, ISPs continue to be a vital voice in these discussions and I am glad that the ISPA Awards reflect the full spectrum of the UK ISP industry and the contributions that the sector makes to businesses and consumers across the UK.”

The only big negative this year was of course that regrettable episode over the “Internet Villain” category, which was completely withdrawn after the ISPA’s decision to include Mozilla in the shortlist for their DNS-over-HTTPS (DoH) push (here) resulted in the association facing somewhat of a global public drubbing.

However we do think they should have kept the Villain category since the other two options (Trump and Article 13 in the EU Copyright Directive) were widely accepted. Shame.

2019 ISPA UK Award Winners

Best Consumer ISP
KCOM

Best Business ISP
Hyperoptic

Best Rural ISP
TrueSpeed Communications

Best Customer Service
Hyperoptic

Best Infrastructure Provider
Openreach

Highly Commended: Cityfibre

Best Hosted Provider
Storm Internet

Executive of the year
Jenny Davies – M247

Best Cyber Security
RM Education

Best VoIP
Voipfone

Best PR Campaign
Internet Watch Foundation – #SoSockingSimple

Best Partnership
Exa Networks

Highly Commended: Wifinity

Best Customer Solution
BT

Internet Hero
Andrew Ferguson (Thinkbroadband)

Highly Commended: Oscar Tapp-Scotting & Paul Blaker, Global Internet Governance Team, DCMS

UPDATE 12:02pm

We’ve had a comment from TrueSpeed.

Evan Wienburg, TrueSpeed CEO, said:

“Winning the ISPA award for Best Rural Broadband ISP in a very competitive field is great news for Truespeed – and is also great news for our growing band of happy customers. We have been focused from day one on helping rural communities bridge the widening rural/urban digital divide by building an ultrafast, highly reliable broadband network that will last for generations.”