Uswitch 2021 Awards Name Top UK Broadband and TV Providers
The winners of the annual Uswitch.com Awards 2021 have today been unveiled, which among other categories saw UK ISP Plusnet scoop the win for “Broadband Provider of the Year“, while Virgin Media once again grabbed the “Fastest Broadband Provider” crown and BT were named best “TV Provider of the Year.” Read on for the full list.
As usual the comparison site appears to have selected its winners via a combination of methods. Most of the awards were decided based on a survey of 17,256 UK consumers (conducted between 29th October and 9th November 202), while several other categories were chosen by a panel of judges from the fields of consumer affairs, personal finance and technology.
Sadly, smaller broadband ISPs were alas almost nowhere to be seen in the awards selection, which is why Virgin Media ended up being named as the fastest provider despite being unable to match the symmetrical Gigabit speeds of many alternative networks, or even the multi-gigabit speeds of Zzoomm, B4RN and CommunityFibre. On the other hand, Virgin are certainly the fastest national or widely available provider (coverage is key), for now.
The results also revealed that less than half of customers (42%) from the “Big Four” broadband ISPs (BT, Virgin Media, Sky Broadband and TalkTalk) have been satisfied with their provider’s service during the past year, although COVID-19 meant that 2020 was anything but normal.
2021 Broadband & TV Award Winners and Runners-up
| BROADBAND & TV | Winner | Runner-up |
| Broadband Provider of the Year | Plusnet | EE |
| Best Triple Play Provider | BT | TalkTalk |
| Best Provider Customer Service | Plusnet | EE |
| Best Value Broadband Provider | Plusnet | Vodafone |
| Fastest Broadband Provider | Virgin Media | Vodafone |
| Most Popular Broadband Provider | Plusnet | TalkTalk |
| TV Provider of the Year | BT | YouView |
| Best TV Content | Disney+ | Netflix |
| Best TV Streaming Service | Netflix | Now TV |
| Best Smart Media Device | Google Chromecast with Google TV | Amazon Fire TV Stick 4K |
| COMMS JOINT AWARDS | Winner | Runner-up |
| Quadplay Provider of the Year | BT | Sky |
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 and Linkedin.
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Plusnet. Best customer service awards? Really?
What piffle – Uswitch awards aren’t worth the paper they are printed on!
i mean they’re just a company. no different from if Tesco did an award. Uswitch are not an authority on anything, let alone broadband.
Looking at the scope of these awards, it says a lot when your having to most of the accolade to Plusnet..
having to GIVE most of the accolade to Plusnet..
Congratulations to PlusNet.
Disney+ is a misunderstanding but Netflix it is not better recently. I also don’t understand people paying for premium linear tv channels.
“I also don’t understand people paying for premium linear tv channels.”
I’d say paying for linear TV channels (don’t forget you get VoD and catch-up content with that too) may be starting to make more sense for some than paying for 4-5 streaming services to give you the same or similar content. This is becoming more of a factor as streaming providers hike their prices.
Plusnet are run by BT folks !!! So really it’s BT &EE which won first prize .I’m With EE they were 2nd but again they both share the same infrastructure.
BT own EE and PlusNet. So if you’re saying that about PN then you can’t say you’re with EE. By your own logic you’re with BT.
Plusnet are run by BT folks !!! So really it’s BT &EE which won first prize .I’m With EE they were 2nd but again they both share the same infrastructure.
So good you posted it twice!
We’ve been with Talk Talk and our
Landlines went off on 29th Jan.. Still waiting for the engineer.. 18 days later
This is most likely an openreach problem, but sadly talk talk customer service aren’t that great at helping or explaining the issues
What’s codswollop. Surely it should be Zen who get awarded best isp?
BT being top-pay-TV provider… despite pulling back from pay-TV.
Sure looks like a set of awards not really worth the effort.
What a load of rubbish
Oh dear.
What a shambles.
USwitch who get paid to promote certain providers gives award to, and lets face it, joke providers.
Plusnet a top provider. Give me a brown envelope stuffed with money and I’ll tell you dodgy Dave internet is the best.
As for the rest well I’ll stick to what I know without some for greedy uncooperative profit taking company telling me what is best.
+1
These things are only a bit of fun.
But there is far more methodology in the Uswitch 2021 top providers guide than the ISPReview 2021 to providers guide.
I wish they had asked me as I would defiantly not put Plusnet forward !
Virgin media, pls come to my area and give me some good customer service
thanks Jon