Plusnet Named Best UK ISP in 2025 Broadband Genie Awards
The annual Broadband Genie 2025 Awards survey has this morning named UK ISP Plusnet as the “Best Broadband Provider” of the year, while a variety of other internet service providers also scooped various other awards across several different categories.
The results are partly based off a OnePoll survey of 3,997 broadband bill payers (conducted between 4th July 2024 and 15th November 2024), as well as an analysis of 291,467 broadband speed tests that were run over a 12-month period. The Best Social Tariff award was separately chosen by a team of Broadband Genie’s judges.
However, it’s worth noting that ISPs could only qualify for these awards if they met certain criteria, including having 50%+ nationwide coverage across the UK (this excludes a lot of alternative networks), being listed on price comparison websites and with a minimum of 20+ customers being interviewed.
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Speaking of which, we also noted that the “Best Altnet” award has been removed from this year’s listing and there’s no longer a general “Fastest Provider” award, only “Fastest Widely Available Provider” and “Fastest Wireless Provider“.
Winners of the Broadband Genie 2025 Awards
Best Provider
Winner: Plusnet (79% of users rated them the best)
Vodafone 78%
Zen Internet 77%
Sky Broadband 77%
BT 75%
Virgin Media 75%
TalkTalk 73%
Direct Save Telecom 71%
Three Broadband (Three UK) 71%
NOW Broadband (NOW TV) 70%Fastest Widely Available Provider
Winner: Virgin Media 188Mbps (average download)
iDNet 177Mbps
Zen Internet 112Mbps
Cuckoo 99Mbps
Vodafone 95Mbps
Andrew & Arnold 72Mb
BT 71Mb
Sky Broadband 60Mb
Three 55Mbps
EE 51Mbps
Plusnet 50Mbps
uno Communications 45Mbps
TalkTalk 35Mbps
Onestream 32Mbps
O2 31Mbps
NOW 30Mbps
EE Mobile 30Mbps
Vodafone Mobile Broadband 29Mbps
SSE 23MbpsFastest Wireless Provider
Best Value for Money
Vodafone
Best provider for Speed Satisfaction
Virgin Media
Most Reliable Provider
Plusnet
Best Customer Service
NOW Broadband
Best Social Tariff
Vodafone
Best Provider for Home Working
Virgin Media
Best Provider for Online Gaming
Virgin Media
Best Provider for Streaming
Virgin Media
Most User Friendly
Plusnet
The survey also revealed some areas where improvements need to be made. For example, customers were overall least satisfied with their provider’s customer service. The category has the lowest scores of any, with Direct Save Telecom (58%) and – surprisingly – Zen Internet (64%) being significantly below the average in this area. This is unusual, as Zen usually ranks above the biggest ISPs in a lot of other consumer surveys.
Bill payers also felt they should be getting better value for money; with this category having the second-lowest average score. Virgin Media (64%), BT (64%), TalkTalk (67%) and Sky Broadband (68%), which together form the majority of the broadband market, were well off the pace of the front-runners.
Table: How do broadband provider compare for customer service and value for money?
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| Provider | Value for money | Customer service |
| BT | 64% | 72% |
| Direct Save | 72% | 58% |
| NOW Broadband | 71% | 73% |
| Plusnet | 73% | 69% |
| Sky | 68% | 72% |
| TalkTalk | 67% | 73% |
| Three Broadband | 70% | 69% |
| Virgin Media | 64% | 72% |
| Vodafone | 75% | 73% |
| Zen Internet | 73% | 64% |
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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Virgin Media customer service, 72% you gotta be joking, Surely!
It always depends on people asked, the actual questions and their perception.
If you have had a service from a provider that has not been disturbed and therefore just works then they will score high. With surveys of small populations any negative comments can skew their percentages.
Plusnet has a loyal base BT so why are you diminishing it?
I agree. Customer service in my eyes is how the business is setup to react with their customers when the customer makes contact and how the business deals with that interaction. How reliable/fast the service is isn’t customer service.
As with all surveys, it depends on who they ask, when they ask them, how many they ask and lots of other factors, so I take surveys with a pinch of salt.
I do kind of agree about Plusnet, I was with them for nearly 9 years and while I did have a couple of problems, the customer service at the time was good and got things sorted or tried to anyway. The majority of the time it worked fine. If it was bad, then I would not have stayed with them for nearly 9 years.
Would I go back? No, I am away from BT now and want to stay away from the company if I can in any shape and form.
As a long standing Plusnet customer I’ve noticed a lot of account related questions appearing on the help forum recently – I would suspect the customer service score to be lower next year.
I haven’t been billed since March as my Plusnet account is currently corrupted & they seem unable to fix it & generate a bill for me to pay despite me making multiple requests to Plusnet to please sort it out.
Virgin media as the best for gaming is terrible. Their latency is always higher than any other company sometimes my 4g was better than when I had virgin for latency.
Happy to provide anecdotal evidence for the decline of Zen Internet customer service, and surprisingly good Virgin Media interactions.
Based on interactions 5 years ago I would have said the complete opposite, but in the past year I have spent days worth of time diagnosing a problem with Zen internet and going through multiple service agents with nonsense advice, and then even cancelling while offering to pay early termination charges was an ordeal.
On the flipside I’ve had multiple efficient interactions with Virgin media, through installation, upgrading my plan, and then subsequently downgrading which I honestly wasn’t expecting to be accommodated.
These awards are so fake, they are all numbers games, because they have the most customers they get the biggest praise, when in reality they usually offer poor services. The smaller brands like iDnet don’t even register on the statistics used for the awards as their customer bases are so small, yet they provide services that are far far better.
AND THE WINNER IS…….
THE ONE WHO PAYS THE MOST COMMISION AND VOLUME BONUSES!
Best customer services = Now Broadband – just check the trust pilot reviews – unbelievable – I can only assume there are back handers and figure fiddling at play here – perhaps they only surveyed a specific set of well bribed people – I just changed from Now Broadband as pretty much nothing streaming wise would work without a VPN and using remote desktop was pretty much impossible without a VPN whereas with a VPN all worked well that is until Now Broadband began pegging back speeds from a guaranteed 35mbps when paying for 63 – at best 18 to 20mbps all day with evenings even worse – 8mbps at times – I was beginning to think my TV may need changing but changed the broadband and everything feels like it has a new lease of life 4k streaming through the TV without any pixelation or ‘check your wifi’ messages – having read the results above I cannot have much if any faith in that survey