Opensignal Ranks Largest 14 UK Broadband ISPs by Reliability
Benchmarking firm Opensignal has today published a complementary study to their recent research into the differences in broadband reliability across countries (here), which reveals the ISPs that deliver the strongest and poorest “broadband reliability experience” in the UK. Suffice to say that it’s a good day for Virgin Media and altnets.
Just to recap. Opensignal leverages crowdsourced data collected via end-users on their benchmarking app and services. In this case they also harnessed their new Broadband Reliability Experience metric, which uses a 100-1000 point scale to measure broadband experience in a typical household where multiple devices are used simultaneously (i.e. how well a household’s internet copes with real-world scenarios, with multiple users).
The assessment examines, among other things, the success rate of completing tasks like streaming video, browsing the web, scrolling through social media and generally identifies that a download speed of 25Mbps+ is the “right threshold to define a connection as reliable.”
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The latest update to this study, which looked at individual internet providers (i.e. the larger players), found that Virgin Media users “have the most reliable fixed broadband experience” in the UK, which is closely followed by alternative full fibre network providers CommunityFibre, Gigaclear and KCOM.
At the opposite end of the table of larger providers sits Starlink, and just above them in the naughty slot are Three UK and, perhaps surprisingly, Zen Internet.
Top UK ISPs for Broadband Reliability Experience
(Score out of 1,000)1. Virgin Media 767
2. CommunityFibre 750
3. Gigaclear 735
4. KCOM 719
5. Vodafone 689
6. Hyperoptic 677
7. Plusnet 671
8. BT 655
9. Sky Broadband 651
10. TalkTalk 643
11. EE 606
12. Zen Internet 595
13. Three UK 451
14. Starlink 405
“At first glance, this may seem counterintuitive, as Ofcom … back in January 2024 announced that Virgin Media was the most complained about fixed broadband provider. However, only 22% of complaints about Virgin Media’s fixed broadband service were about faults, services and provisioning, well below the industry average of 37%“, said Opensignal. Virgin’s biggest flaws do indeed tend to emanate more from their support and complaints handling processes.
Given that consumer take-up is likely to drive the results from crowdsourced based data studies like this, then it may be worth considering that one of the reasons why Openreach based ISPs are so common in the bottom half of the table is because many of them still have large bases of ADSL and FTTC (VDSL2) customers on copper or hybrid fibre lines (these are not as reliable as full fibre FTTP).
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In addition, we disagree with the approach of conflating satellite and mobile broadband services with fixed line broadband networks, which is due to the often significant differences in technologies and their applications. Not to mention that this makes it difficult to know what products they were actually testing with providers like Vodafone, which can deliver both mobile broadband and fixed broadband services for homes. Take with the usual pinch of salt.
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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As you say Mark, trying to compare an altnet which is 100% FTTP with an Openreach ISP which is only 1/3 FTTP is hardly a fair comparison.
Interesting that Starlink fared worse than Three UK
Both are the only options for some people
Although I’d like to see how Three compares to FWA for my own rural needs
Three is in relation to the FWA they have in parts of London and Swindon. They bought ‘UK Broadband’ also previously known as Relish, that used somewhere around 3900mhz to 4000mhz band range for their FWA broadband service.
🙂
I have an unstable FTTC connection which openreach has investigated twice in four years and told me there was nothing wrong, but did upgrade my wall socket. I am certain its not my setup or the ISPs, as I have used four different routers, three different ISPs (including Zen) , locating my router in a different room and four different leads. Things reached a head recently when I was streaming TV and during an hour’s programme reconnected four times. Fortunately I have been able to change to FTTP, via an alt net.
Bit late now, but the more robust solution to this is to subscribe with another ISP for a 2nd line. They’ll fit a new line to your house, normally for free.
Then cancel the first onw.
I do like the OpenSignal app but not being able to tell the transport layer; satellite, mobile, ADSL, FTTC or FTTP is a huge flaw for like to like comparison.
I’m not suggesting that is easy but you would think that appropriate standard efforts should include the network management requirements that support a fair customer offer. That’s part of a fair market IMHO.