Which? Survey Criticises Virgin Media and Sky Broadband for Connectivity Woes
Consumer magazine Which? have summarised some of the results from their latest online study of UK broadband connection issues, which surveyed 5,235 people in December 2025 and January 2026. The results praised Zen Internet, while criticising Sky Broadband (inc. NOW TV) and Virgin Media for poor performance and connection problems.
Overall, the survey found that the vast majority of broadband customers (91%) had experienced at least one issue with their service in the past year, although not all of these will have been caused by their chosen internet provider (issues with local Wi-Fi signals, power cuts and router configurations may also play a role, among other things). Lest we forget that most consumers have yet to upgrade to modern full fibre (FTTP) connections.
The survey reported that 28% of respondents regularly experienced slow download and upload speeds, while 25% said they suffered “very slow” speeds, 23% reported experiencing “frequent connection dropouts“, 21% said they had suffered problems with video calling and 15% reported having “frequently” experienced connection dropouts lasting longer than an hour over the past year.
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The survey then attempted to identify some of the best and worst broadband ISPs for each of these issues, although as usual Which? only provides a very limited selection of headline examples and so we don’t get the full context (hint: they want you to buy their magazine to get that, naturally). But needless to say, Zen Internet was found to be the “Best Provider” in every area, while NOW Broadband (NOW TV – part of Sky), Sky Broadband and Virgin Media all found themselves in the “Worst Provider” table, often on several occasions.
Best and Worst UK ISPs for Broadband Connection Issues
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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Although I’m not a current member Zen was always one of the top performers recommended by Which.
I’m with Zen, my connection went down (LOS on the fibre) one morning earlier this month, I contacted them on live chat, there was an Openreach guy round at 9am the next morning and by 9:30 I was back online. I can’t really say fairer than that on a consumer-grade connection.
I’m not that impressed with Zen.
I was affected by the faulty CityFibre/Nokia ONT firmware issue which caused slow upload speeds earlier this year. I knew Zen were already aware of it as I’d seen other people with the same issue on Reddit who had got an acknowledgement from CityFibre via Zen. Yet I wasted an hour on the live chat and then several days of back and forth emails with a different agent answering each time to finally get an acknowledgement. I wouldn’t have even bothered contacting them for a known issue but I had also seen that CityFibre were only going to update ONTs on request so I wanted to be on the list.
The final straw for me with Zen was when I saw Richard Tang on one of his videos boasting he had not replaced 10 technical support staff members because of their use of AI. Now I have no problem with AI being first line support but once you get through to a human I want them to know their stuff and be aware of issues affecting service. I am leaving when my contract is up next month.
I’m guessing a lot of respondents are FTTC? If so a lot of these issues can probably be attributed to the copper technology rather than service provider.
Virgin cable isn’t as reliable as they like to make out either. It’s amazing how much power loss you’d get if the coax cable became unscrewed even by a little bit.
FTTP is available to 80%+ of the country. If don’t choose to upgrade that’s up to them. I suspect a lot of problems are down to crappy ISP supplied routers.
A lot this well down to the type of customer each attracts. I imagine the average Zen customer is far more tech savy than the average Sky or Virgin customer so will be able to resolve most problems themselves and may well be using their own equipment as well.
I’m a little surprised at the Sky/Now result. They got OR to fix our line very quickly when it was first installed, and after that it was perfectly reliable.
If they are worse than other providers, perhaps it is because they are LLU and have to maintain their own equipment in exchanges.
I do wonder with surveys like this that ask non-technical consumers about their experience whether things like “slow speeds” are down to the user’s own equipment, their wi-fi or even their computer or device being rubbish.
You’ll have “problems with video calling” on a perfect connection if your computer is old and/or running mountains of bloatware or malware in the background. Sometimes, ISPs get the blame for things that are nothing to do with the ISP, because people want someone to blame.
I suspect the type of person who buys from Zen is also the type of person who understands that e.g. if you’re of FTTC and several miles from the cabinet then your speeds will be reduced regardless of provider, and / or that WiFi will often struggle to deliver full “line speed” on fast FTTP packages.
These reports from Which make me laugh, they always call out the same companies as excellent, even when lots of people have had issues with them. I’d love to know who does their surveys.
I’ve said it before for me Zen were the worst ISP I have ever had (going all the way back to dialup). I was only with them for 18 months but it that time I twice had major issues with peak time congestion and significant packet loss. Nothing wrong with my FTTC but both times congestion in their network from my exchange.
I’ve been happily on FTTP with other providers for over five years now, but I’d still not trust Zen to deliver a reliable service now.