Study Claims 18 Percent of UK Broadband Homes Fail to Receive Min 10Mbps Speed
A new study from Broadband Genie, which analysed 144,067 web-based broadband speed tests over an unspecified 12-month period, has claimed that 18% households in the UK are receiving “broadband” download speeds slower than the Universal Service Obligation (USO) of 10Mbps download or 1Mbps upload. But take that claim with a pinch of salt.
According to the results, 14% failed to record download speeds of 10Mbps and 13% did not reach a threshold of 1Mbps for uploads. The results claim to show a big disparity between official network availability and the speeds customers actually receive. Official Ofcom figures are said to show 1% of UK premises completely lack access to a USO-capable option (it’s actually 0.1% when mobile/wireless networks are included), but Broadband Genie’s data states that 18% of actual customer connections are failing to beat the USO bar for both downloads and uploads at the same time.
The three “worst performing providers” were then identified as Vodafone (mobile broadband), Three (mobile home broadband) and EE (mobile home broadband), where many of their customers failed to reach the USO thresholds. But take note that where you position a mobile broadband router can have a huge impact on signal reception.
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Meanwhile, the worst-performing fixed line broadband ISP was named as EE, where 28% of their customers failed to meet the overall USO requirements.
Which customers are receiving the slowest broadband speed?
| Rank | Provider | % below 10Mb down | % below 1Mb up | % USO fail |
| 1 | Vodafone Mobile Broadband | 34.1% | 15.5% | 38.6% |
| 2 | Three UK Mobile Home Broadband | 28.8% | 24.0% | 37.7% |
| 3 | EE Mobile Home Broadband | 25.8% | 20.8% | 31.7% |
| 4 | EE | 24.3% | 21.3% | 27.8% |
| 5 | Plusnet | 20.5% | 22.3% | 25.3% |
| 6 | TalkTalk | 20.6% | 19.4% | 24.3% |
| 7 | BT | 15.1% | 14.8% | 18.2% |
| 8 | Sky Broadband | 9.7% | 8.9% | 13.5% |
| 9 | iDNET | 12.0% | 6.0% | 12.0% |
| 10 | Airband | 9.7% | 6.5% | 11.1% |
Which customers receive the fastest broadband speed?
| Rank | Provider | % below 10Mb down | % below 1Mb up | % USO fail |
| 1 | Zzoomm | 0.9% | 0.0% | 0.9% |
| 2 | Hey! Broadband | 0.4% | 0.4% | 0.9% |
| 3 | Onestream | 1.1% | 0.0% | 1.1% |
| 4 | toob | 1.7% | 1.0% | 1.8% |
| 5 | Squirrel Internet | 1.8% | 1.8% | 1.8% |
| 6 | Trooli | 2.6% | 0.7% | 2.6% |
| 7 | YouFibre | 2.6% | 1.7% | 3.6% |
| 8 | CommunityFibre | 3.7% | 0.8% | 3.8% |
| 9 | Truespeed | 3.8% | 0.0% | 3.8% |
| 10 | Fibrus | 4.2% | 0.9% | 4.2% |
The big catch here is that web-based broadband speed testing has its limits and can be affected by various issues, such as slow Wi-Fi, limitations of the tester itself, restrictions of the device being used, local network congestion and package choice (a lot of people will pick a slower and cheaper plan, even with 1Gbps available). Equally, some older ISPs will have a larger base of slower copper line customers, which will drag down the figures.
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The results above thus don’t provide enough context about each individual test to say for sure that those falling below the USO level are actually unable to attain faster speeds on their current service. Equally, such testing can be more a reflection of take-up, rather than underlying network availability (not everybody takes the fastest ISP/network/package as soon as it arrives).
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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Surely there aren’t any packages offering 10Mbps or lower so package choice can be ruled out. That still leaves a fair few though.
“The big catch here is that web-based broadband speed testing has its limits and can be affected by various issues, such as slow Wi-Fi”
So the study is fairly meaningless really :/
Exactly.
My most recent use case for speed testers was using my phone to work out rough Wi-Fi throughput at various locations within my parents house to test viable node positions for a mesh. No doubt I’ve racked up a good few apparently “poor” speeds against that ISP which bears no relation to their actual wired speed.
For some horrible oversight reason , the Universal Service Obligation embodied in legislation by Parliament only covers analogue phones . . .it does not cover broadband. So if you are moved to Digital Voice or equivalent and then a “Stop-cell” is declared on your FTTC line, . . . if the ISP, for whatever reason, decides not to extend FTTP to your location. . . you are stuffed . . .because DV, or equivaent, depends on the broadband bearer . . no broadband . . . no telephone . . .That’s what’s happened to me, in a NW London suburb, I suspect the antcipation of excessive civils cost for FTTP installation (I can’t see CBTs ln the nearby telegraph poles) BT decided not to extend FTTP to my road and, again, in anticipation of an FTTP priority exchange being declared and the prospects that this would involve the full shouldering of installation costs by BT and Openreach,decided avoidance was the better part of valour and that shaking-off customers who are in this position prior to the FTTP declaration, would be the least cost/profit maximising option. End result for me .telephone cut off . . broadband cut off. And I am, according to the Local Government and Communities Ministry,an “Extremely clinically Vulnerable” person. Good init ? British bureaucracy at its best.
Meanwhile, with Home Office support, and the aid of Starlink, thousands of mobile towers have been built to fill in the “No-Go” signal areas. Compare and contrast.
UK patchwork introduction of broadband . . the biggest strategic fupp-up to date.
It is hard to understand what your point is, very waffly.
Stop sell only applies to those premises that can actually get FTTP. If it is not available to you, then the stop sell rules don’t apply and you can take any other available service such as FTTC. BT and others can then sell you digital voice.
BT (not Openreach) do have a broadband USO, with a minimum speed of 10Mbps. The vast majority of premises that can get FTTC obviously will far exceed that already.
With your long history of pointing at North Sea gas conversion as a project and claim of cherry picking thought you’d like to know availability of full fibre has overtaken availability of mains gas. Availability of gigabit is at 91%.
Believe the reason you can’t get gigabit is your personal obstruction of the cable company when they tried to deploy plant in your area. Think I read on here that you caused issues with a pole installation by BT in your area also.
Openreach haven’t finished build in your area. If you don’t have full fibre available you aren’t under a stop-sell. Don’t need a CBT on your pole to have it available either, occasionally CBT serving a customer is on another pole and cable is threaded from that pole to own then onto customer to serve them.
When their methodology showed that 4% of Community Fibre customers (an FTTP-only provider with an entry level product of 75Mbps) weren’t receiving 10Mbps they should have stopped and re-assessed this. These numbers will be consumer choice (e.g. using a smartphone instead of subscribing to a fixed line service, or not moving from ADSL to FTTP) or in-home Wi-Fi problems.
The whole introduction of broadband was conceived and allowed to continue on the basis that “Cherry-picking” of installation sites was permissible. Result . . . a total patch work. . its like Goldilocks porridge . . some areas where provisioning is just about right . . .some areas were there is slight under-provisioning, some areas were there is gross over provisioining znd a substantial cohort where there’s nothing at all.
As mentioned in my previous post, “Cherry-picking” is so rife that even BT are using it as a”Get-out-ofjail-free” card.
Absolute chaotic shambles and, comme d’habitude, nobody held to account for this ridiculous policy -yet they can tolerate spending billions out of the public purse, courtesy of Grant-in-aid, to fund a truncated HS2.
1.5mbps-3.5mbps here, that’s with an ethernet cable in the router
And don’t give me mobile networks, Three is the only one with useable service and that barely works in the evening, with latency 250ms+ and download speeds at best 12mbps but often crawl a lot less
Broadband rollout has been disgraceful, where people with fast speeds get faster speeds and everyone else is left behind
The mobile networks do NOT plug the gap satisfactorily, wish ISPReview would stop pretending they do – Their service quality & reliability is awful
If you are suffering from such broadband hardship perhaps Starlink would give you an immediate fix, it works anywhere in the UK that has view of the southern sky.
Mobile in some areas better than FTTC. Works for me but I researched that likely it would (knew which window to put the hub). Some would need external antenna on a tall pole (just like TV).
YMMV.
I know of someone who is still on ADSL, or was the last time I spoke to them a couple of months ago, I doubt anything have changed.
They get it very cheap.
Totally useless as the basis to see what people subscribe to but decent data point to show that people are lazy and don’t invest enough in their technology/infrastructure at home. Clearly 95% of these people have terrible WiFi and if they did wire their house with ethernet, deploy a proper WiFi mesh with wired internet backhaul and moved devices that should be wireless like TVs, streaming boxes, game consoles etc to wired Ethernet they would solve all their WiFi problems for good.