Virgin Media Accounts for 44 Percent of Big UK Broadband ISP Outage Searches UPDATE
A new study from DTP Group has analysed monthly UK internet searches relating to broadband outages among the country’s largest ISPs and found that Virgin Media tops the table as the provider most commonly associated with service disruptions, accounting for 44% of searches (i.e. 27,100 searches every month related to Virgin Media outages).
BT ranked second after Virgin, accounting for 24% of all outage-related monthly searches, with an average of 14,800 searches per month. By comparison Vodafone generated the fewest such internet searches and came bottom of the table on 4.7% (2,900 searches each month), which is less surprising given that they’re also the smallest of the six listed broadband providers.
Obviously, there are going to be some caveats with this sort of study, not least because we don’t currently have any solid data that would allow us to cross-reference whether or not a particular ISP has actually experienced more fixed broadband outages than others, or to what scale those occurred. Masses of broadband outages occur daily, but most are localised or so short lived that few even notice (especially when occurring late at night).
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In addition, it’s unclear whether this study did anything to separate searches for broadband from those linked to mobile networks, which could be a problem for a few of the providers that also offer mobile services. Suffice to say, it’s difficult to know how much this sort of study, which is focused on broadband, actually correlates to real outages and for which services.
Internet Outage Searches by Broadband Provider
Generally we’d expect, all things being equal (which they often aren’t), the biggest providers to produce the greatest proportional quantity of searches related to internet outages. But it’s certainly notable that Virgin Media, which is home to 5,417,900 broadband consumers, sits well ahead of BT, which is home to 8,790,000 (consumers and businesses). In that sense Sky Broadband seems to fair pretty well, since they’re home to 5,640,000 consumers (estimated), but only accounted for 5.8% of outage searches.
Regional differences
The study also took a cursory look at regional differences across the UK, which will of course be impacted by population sizes. For example, London recorded the highest overall number of provider-related outage searches, generating 13,290 searches every month, which was followed by Birmingham (2,540), Manchester (1,920), Leeds (1,350), Glasgow (1,240), Edinburgh (1,150) and Newcastle (1,020).
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However, smaller cities, including Bristol (710), Liverpool (530) and Sheffield (390), also recorded noticeable levels of search activity. When provider-specific outage searches are adjusted for population, Manchester emerges as the UK’s biggest broadband frustration hotspot, recording 325.61 provider-outage searches per 100,000 people each month, which is almost 3.7 times the national average of 87.98 per 100,00 residents.
Newcastle ranks a close second, with 318.15 searches per 100,000 residents, despite having a much smaller population than many of the other cities analysed. Edinburgh follows in third place with 216.70 searches per 100,000 people, narrowly ahead of Birmingham at 214.60.
Interestingly, the city-level data reinforces Virgin Media’s dominance in the national provider rankings above. In Manchester, for example, Virgin Media-related outage searches account for 52% of the city’s 1,920 monthly provider searches, while in Newcastle the provider accounts for 58% of 1,020 searches. In Edinburgh, Virgin Media represents 63% of the city’s 1,150 provider-related searches.
Overall, the results are interesting, but without more data to cross-reference we wouldn’t read too much into it and advise taking this data with a pinch of salt.
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UPDATE 4:56pm
We’ve received a comment from Virgin Media.
A Virgin Media spokesperson said:
“This study, based solely on internet searches, bears no relation to reality and cannot be taken as a reflection of real-life network performance.
Real-world independent data from Opensignal ranks Virgin Media top across every national broadband category – including download speed, upload speed, consistent quality, video experience and reliability – showing that in reality our customers benefit from the UK’s best broadband services.”
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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Cable (VM) is the new modern day dial-up.
This checks out with my personal experience. I had Virgin Media between 2021-2023 and had so much trouble with my line they could never sort out despite sending out multiple techs. I moved over to BT FTTC and while the speeds are a fraction of what I used to get, it’s super reliable and I haven’t had any issues in 3+ years.
We had VM years ago and they were horrendous, never resolved issues . We switched to BT ADSL just to get away from them Been upgraded now to BT FTTP, Virgin just don’t compare, reliability or speed! Would never go back
I think it just comes down to the technology involved. HFC was much better than a copper telephone line at the time, but it’s been eclipsed by full fibre, which shows just how unreliable the technology really is.
I had HFC from 2010-2026 and it was pretty reliable for the most part, except at peak times when it slowed down and it would sometimes go down all day and all night. I have full fibre now, no peak time slowdown and it hasn’t gone down once.
is docsis just less reliable tech?
Similar experience for me, when I moved house I had the option of taking City Fibre which I did. I work from home and in a year it hasn’t once failed or had an issue. Could hardly make it through a week when I was with VM
@clive peters I mean, yes.
HFC is fibre to a cabinet, and then reinforced copper cable from the cabinet to your house. It still transmits the data on RF frequencies which are susceptible to RF noise, corroded connectors, moisture, electrical interference etc. requiring active amplifiers. Things like power levels have to be correct. Jitter and latency is often higher as a result.
Full fibre is immune to the vast majority of these problems, making it more reliable.
From what I’ve seen the VMO2 coax network is not very well maintained with missing covers and exposed/corroded connections being a common sight. Not surprised if they have problems.
Recording number of searches without taking in consideration the number of users the ISP has is incredibly bad methodology. I wouldn’t trust this study at all (and I’m no Virgin fan).
I have had full fibre with VM for nearly a year now and have had one outage caused by a third party cable break. The rest of the time it has been ok with Virgin sending me email updates telling me how many times they have tested the circuit and a reminder of how good it is.
I do like the fact there is no ONT with the combined routers they provide. However I am not a fan of their billing structure and have had small wins arguing the toss over fulfilling their offers that did not materialise as promised.
Getting in touch with them can be a nightmare but that’s true of most companies who seem to deliberately set themselves up this way these days.
Their contract renewal prices are also extortionate and when my two year contract ends (another stupid modern world frustration) I will more than likely add their CSP to the ever growing collection I have dangling from the front of my house and move on.
“I do like the fact there is no ONT with the combined routers they provide. ”
Thats annoying for me and a blocker. Zero intention of using a Hub5x as my router! It has no “modem only mode” like the Hub5 on HFC network. Ok, you can get SFP module to a limited amount of routers with MSFP port but it’s not supported and against VN rules as not supplied by them and once they realise they can take steps to break it.
The GiffGaff approach is better on their Nextfibre network, its an ONT to your own router of choice (or potentially to a VM/Nextfibre suplied router if they wanted to). If you break service you can re-join as ONT already there in situ, as HUB5’s have to be returned if you end contract and have to be sent out again if you re-join.