The H1 2025 Top Fastest UK Mobile and Home Broadband ISPs

We suspect most of the improvements mentioned in the prior paragraph will be due to customers upgrading to Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) based packages from slower ADSL and hybrid fibre (FTTC / SOGEA) based ones – all three providers have plenty of customers on legacy connections left to convert.

Otherwise, Vodafone saw a small decline in download performance, while TalkTalk saw bigger declines in both download and upload performance. The latter is most likely due to weighting changes as TalkTalk lost around 400,000 customers last year (leaving them on 3.2 million), which will have impacted the structure of their base and splits between different connection types.

Fastest 20 Smaller Broadband ISPs (H1 2025 vs H2 2024)

As mentioned above, the following table reflects a top list of the fastest smaller providers (excluding those major providers listed above and some others), which also includes some large-ish providers that may not have strong national availability due to the limited coverage of their underlying network(s). This is intended to provide some useful context against the biggest and most widely available market players above.

The table below is ordered by median download speed, but for extra context we’ve also included a figure for upload performance in brackets. Most of the providers in this list are faster than the major players because they’re often connected to alternative networks with faster entry-level packages and will often have a lower portion of users (sometimes none at all) on older copper-based connections (ADSL, FTTC etc.). But there are some exceptions (e.g. some highly rated ISPs that have been around a long time may suffer in this table due to the impact of legacy users on slower lines).

Top 20 Smaller ISPs – Average Downloads (Upload)

Overall, the average speeds shown above are significantly faster than those of the market’s largest ISPs, which isn’t surprising as a lot of the smaller players will be using modern alternative full fibre networks that have managed to pull customers away from often slower packages and older connection technologies on the biggest providers.

The catch is that smaller providers produce a smaller data sample, which means that these results will fluctuate more over time. Internet providers are also more likely to both dip into and out of the above list, between updates, due to many of them only just being able to produce the minimum required level of test data.

Satellites

We’ve also been keeping track of the results for SpaceX’s satellite based Starlink broadband service. Sadly, not enough data exists to include other satellite platforms or providers, but that may change in the future. Otherwise, Starlink’s download performance appears to have risen during the first half of 2025 and it’s a similar story for their upload performance.

The Fastest Mobile Operators

Mobile performance remains a difficult network technology to study because end-users are always moving through different areas (indoor, outdoor and underground), using different devices with different capabilities and the surrounding environment is ever changeable (weather, trees, buildings etc.). All of this can impact signal quality and that’s before we consider any differences in network (backhaul) capacity or spectrum usage between locations.

Suffice to say that studies of mobile broadband speed are inherently open to variation, but the top networks often tend to be those with a combination of the best 4G or 5G coverage, a good amount of radio spectrum and the most advanced technologies.

Average Mobile Download Speeds – H1 2025 vs H2 2024

Average Mobile Upload Speeds – H1 2025 vs H2 2024

Overall, the average download speed of the four primary mobile operators was 26.42Mbps (down from 28.1Mbps in H2 2024) and the average upload speed hit 5.25Mbps (up slightly from 5.17Mbps). The big change this time around seems to be that near 26% loss of downstream performance at Vodafone, although we have seen big swings with mobile operators like this before and suspect it’s not the start of a new trend.

The market for 5G services in the UK is now started to reach a degree of maturity, with swings of c.5-10% in one direction or the other are not uncommon between biannual updates. However, the most interesting one to watch going forward will be how the results change as Three UK and Vodafone begin the long-winded process of network integration, although for now we’ll continue to list them as separate brands.

Take note that existing 5G networks also remain hobbled by some issues of limited coverage and legacy 4G services, although ongoing expansion Standalone 5G (SA) networks is starting to change that. In addition, Ofcom’s plan to auction off more 5G spectrum in the mmW bands – 26GHz and 40GHz – in the very near future is another event to watch, although its impacts may be limited to busy urban areas and events (device support is another factor).