Uswitch 2023 Awards Name Best UK Broadband and Mobile Providers
Uswitch.com has unveiled the winners of their annual 2023 Telecoms Awards event, which among things saw Plusnet named as the best LARGE broadband ISP of the year, while Hyperoptic took the same award for smaller providers. Meanwhile, BT was named as the most reliable broadband ISP and giffgaff came top for mobile.
The comparison site selected its winners via a combination of methods. Most of the awards were decided based on an Opinium Research survey of 22,832 UK consumers (conducted between December 2022 and January 2023), while several other categories were chosen by a panel of judges from the fields of consumer affairs, personal finance and technology. Happily, this year’s event did include some smaller providers.
Finally, the ‘Fastest Mobile Network Overall‘ award was based on an analysis of crowdsourced performance data from Opensignal (i.e. mobile broadband upload and download speeds).
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WINNERs – Uswitch Telecoms Awards 2023
Broadband Categories
Broadband Provider of the Year – Large – Plusnet
Broadband Provider of the Year – Hyperoptic
Best Provider for Customer Service – EE
Best Value for Money Broadband Provider – NOW Broadband (NOW TV)
Most Reliable Broadband Provider – BT
Best Alternative Network (Altnet) – CommunityFibre
Most Popular Broadband Provider – Virgin Media (VMO2)
Mobile Categories
Network of the Year – giffgaff
Handset of the Year – Apple (iPhone 14 Pro Max)
Best Network for Customer Service – Tesco Mobile
Best Network for Data – EE
Best Network for Roaming – O2 (VMO2)
Most Popular Mobile Network – O2 (VMO2)
Fastest Mobile Network Overall – EE
Best Pay Monthly Network – Tesco Mobile
Best Pay As You Go Network – giffgaff
Best SIM Only Network – BT
Best Pay Monthly Value for Money – Tesco Mobile
Best SIM Only Value for Money – giffgaff
Misc. Categories
Best TV Content – Disney+
Best Telecoms Innovation – Sky (for Sky Stream)
Best Refurbished Gadgets Company – MusicMagpie
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, BlueSky, Threads.net and Linkedin.
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Never quite sure how Giffgaff manage to win this
In my experience, industry awards ceremonies are lacking in any fairness, transparency or validity. In a previous role my employers were up for a well known industry award from the leading trade publication, we’d done a fantastic submission backed by strong data, but were told in no uncertain terms to win they had to book X many tables at the expensive awards ceremony, adding up to about £30,000 if they wanted to be in with a chance (they said no). And whether its a switching platform like Uswitch or more commonly a trade publication, ultimately ***they make their money from the companies concerned***, so it needs to be a case of everybody wins something for the big players as you’ll see looking down the awards list, to avoid offending the paymasters. Are VM really the most popular when BT group ISPs are twice the size? Are EE best for customer service compared to AAISP, uno, Aquiss etc? Smaller outfits might pick up a few crumbs, eg in the Altnet category that’s about it. And “best refurbished gadgets company” – where on earth did that come from?
I like Plusnet, but I’m confused how they have won broadband provider of the year when they don’t offer the full range of speeds? Still no 900mbps broadband on offer?!?
Plusnet offer 900 when it’s available _ and I personally checked every customer when they call to see if they can get it. If it’s there it will be offered even by Tech as I was – bonus for the win etc
But I am not sure either – and I worked there for 26 years until feb . It’s sure come a long way in all those year mind!
Fastest Mobile Network Overall – EE – WRONG AND LIED! – Should be Three!
Best Network for Data – EE – WRONG AND LIED! – Should be Three!
Three are just 100% Wrong and Lied – should be Sky Mobile IMHO 🙂
Three the fastest and best? Please stop, my sides hurt!! I’m literally sat using Three’s 3G network because both the 4G and 5G are below 0.01Mb! Don’t get me wrong, when you find somewhere it works it is fast, I was hitting 800Mb on it. But I want to be able to use it at home, not when I’m standing under the mast!
Interesting USwitch Competition.A major Supply of Broadband and Telephone, leaves its Users with stress and frustration. The company is excellent in selling its products and services in the initial setting up process. However, after that it fails to Zero, in after sales and customer service issues. The company restrictions of its service before assessment of any problem experienced. The Customer is not able to speak to anyone. The Service is restricted with only a Robot message without any access to your account. Perhaps in your investigation with these providers you could ask Sky why, it’s the option they chose for their customers.
GiffGaff really?
Not the cheapest, definitely not the fastest… HOW and WHY?
Easy to manage, roaming included, better network coverage than Smarty (Three).
O2 shouldn’t be winning anything ever, the worst network I have ever had the displeasure of using, weirdly enough it was fine for the first two months, got a text saying they were improving the network and that’s when everything went downhill, a unlimited data plan I cannot make use of and constant call dropping, reported to o2 who did nothing, went to ombudsman who said because I could use 12GB of data a month I couldn’t leave o2 penalty free, the 12GB of data was used he other side of the country by the way, disgusting company
How can o2 a mno handle the customer bases of giffgaff, sky mobile, tesco mobile, virgin and their own o2 customers is beyond me. 5 huge networks using one network does not go. Of course other mnos do the same thing but o2 strategy congests and harms the overall experience of all the mvnos on their network. Good for profit but thats all