Plusnet UK Sweeps the 2023 Expert Reviews Broadband ISP Awards
Consumer website Expert Reviews has published the winners of their annual “Best Broadband Awards 2023” event, which has surveyed UK consumers in an effort to identify the best Internet Service Providers (ISP) across a range of categories. Much like last year, the overall winner was named as Plusnet, again.
As per usual, the results were drawn from a YouGov survey of 4,664 UK adults, which was undertaken online between 17th and 19th January 2023. The figures have been weighted and are said to be representative of all UK adults (aged 18+). Respondents were then asked how likely they would be to recommend their broadband ISP to others and to rate its customer service, reliability, value and speed.
BT’s low-cost sibling ISP Plusnet ended up stealing the show by winning four out of the six categories, including the main “OVERALL BEST PROVIDER” award. Some 83% of the company’s customers declared themselves happy with the reliability of the service, while 7 out of 10 said they were satisfied with the customer service. In addition, 78% said they were likely to recommend Plusnet.
However, the survey also revealed some wider industry issues, such as the fact that 43% of those surveyed had reported an increase in their broadband bills since signing up, yet 25% of broadband customers weren’t aware that prices could increase. In addition, 9% said they’d been assured that there wouldn’t be any price rises for the whole of their contract.
The good news for 2023 is that only 12% of respondents reported being dissatisfied with their provider’s customer service, while only 26% of those surveyed claim to be unlikely to recommend their service provider. There was, however, a much larger percentage of customers dissatisfied with Virgin Media’s customer service, with 22% stating they were not satisfied (32% also said they were not likely to recommend the provider).
Expert Reviews Award Winners for 2023
OVERALL BEST PROVIDER
Winner: Plusnet
Highly Commended: Now Broadband (NOW TV)
BEST CUSTOMER SERVICE
Winner: Plusnet
Highly Commended: EE
BEST CONTACT CENTRE
Winner: Plusnet
Highly Commended: Now Broadband (NOW TV)
MOST RELIABLE
Winner: Plusnet
Highly Commended: TalkTalk
BEST VALUE
Winner: Now Broadband
Highly Commended: Plusnet
BEST SPEED
Winner: Virgin Media
Highly Commended: BT
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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Is that positive recognition, or an acceleration excuse for BT to trash a working brand and replace it with EverythingEverywhere? Which could also be called AnythingAnytime, SomethingSomewhere, PlentyProbably all of which describe what the brand is less than PlusNet……
Congratulations to Plusnet, obviously well deserved.
Amazing ho well they do considering their very poor score on Trustpilot
Take a lot of these reviews and awards with a pinch of salt, The prolem is people have a bad time with a provider and they write negative stuff about them and that is it. I have done the same thing, even with providers I have never been with myself but have had to deal with, like Talk Talk. I would not use them myself due to the problems I have had with their customer services on behalf of other people and how treated a mate, but I realise there are people who are with them that are happy with the service, like a friend of mine who have had no real problems, apart from when Talk Talk stuck her on ADSl instead of FTTC.
The same with plusnet, they have been pretty good for me, but I also realise that for some people they have not been so good.
I have said for a while, sometimes it is better to stay with the devil you know.
Just shows how much of a joke these awards are when literally an abysmal customer satisfaction score wins
I don’t know what year the CPI/inflation started being a common practice, but it’s extremely annoying. I used to just pay full price rather than starting a new contract and the monthly bill kept growing and growing each year until I finally took notice and started a new contract. Probably taught myself a good lesson to always be shopping around. I must have been with Plus net on and off for 15 years or more and for the most part I rate them as an ISP. But I will be trying CityFibre later thia year when my contract expires. Symmetrical speeds and breaking away from BT/Openreach who effectively have a monopoly on much of the market feels the right thing to do.
Great awards
All I can say is the other ISP’s must be terrible, I can’t believe that Plusnet have won awards after the awful customer service and performance that I have experienced
Proves the point I said above, I had nothing but great customer service from them. Maybe it depends on who you get at the other end of the phone or email.
Something is clearly wrong with the so-called consumer website ‘Expert Reviews’, because none of the listed broadband providers (Plusnet, Now, EE, TalkTalk, BT) are better than 2 out of 5 stars rated here in ISPReview.
And before someone claims that users only tend to post negative reviews, take another look at https://www.ispreview.co.uk/review/top10.php !
These things are only a bit of fun but it does have a reasonable sample size.
I did take a look at the ispreview top ten as per your suggestion and the ‘top 5’ include a provider with no reviews since 2021. A provider with two reviews in the last year and has had negative reviews wiped and a provider who miraculously had 10 reviews in the same day!
More like Expert Bribe takers. Rigged just like movie awards, tv awards, gaming awards, etc where the winner is not the objective best but the one who contributed most to the investor’s ESG score
Shame BT won’t be clear about PlusNet’s future. I moved to an alt net last month because they did VOIP, something PlusNet don’t currently and may never offer.
Yes, i wish BT would come out with what they are doing with plusnet.
Shutting it down I assume – PN Mobile is going and we are having training to go to EE for billing and tech and BT Mobile is now dead too – so…
I think EE will be the only thing left – EE and BTO
Talk talk highly commended in Reliability ha ha
Aww how nice! Makes me happy to know I am doing my best – that said my NPS score is 99% on most months so this is good to see publicly 🙂
I woke up this morning thinking today can’t be another day of disbelief.
Opens ISPreview…… FFS, not another day.
Really !!!!
I don’t believe anything I read online any more. This has to be the biggest fix this year.
Plusnet wins most of the awards. Plusnet is a 2nd rate company at best with a terrible router.
None of them are world class.
Who in 2023 still uses the ISP provided router anyway??
Ref Digital Voice:
I can understand that a normal (analog) phone can be plugged into the back of the router upstairs in my office but what about the analog phone plus integrated answering machine downstairs ? I cannot use wifi due to a brain injury.
Any ideas please?
Plusnet were the only isp added to the draw so they had a pretty good chance of winning.
WELL DONE PISSNET