SpeedGeo Q3 2026 study names Virgin Media fastest for UK broadband
The SpeedGeo project, which compares broadband connection quality by benchmarking the internet speeds of real users, has published their Q3 2026 results and once again named Virgin Media as the fastest fixed broadband ISP. But the study only examined a handful of the largest ISPs, which ignores all of the smaller often faster altnets and retail providers that exist.
The latest Q3 2026 study is based on data gathered from real measurements conducted by users of SpeedGeo’s V-SPEED applications, including via their website, as well as on Android, iOS, Windows and macOS. A total of 874,769 tests were conducted across “fixed and mobile-broadband lines using cable or Wi-Fi connections” between 1st October 2025 and 30th September 2026 (Q4 2025 to Q3 2026).
As with the above note, there are always caveats to consider with speedtest based studies like this, not least because the results for broadband lines tend to be more reflective of take-up than network availability. For example, some fixed ISPs may have a much larger proportion of customers on slower copper-based lines, which can weigh against those on faster FTTP services with the same provider (i.e. pulling the average down).
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The SpeedGeo study also only lists a handful of big providers, which misses a lot of key players and completely ignores the many significantly faster alternative broadband networks that now exist across the UK. This is due to SpeedGeo’s limited data sample size, as well as the fact that they only include operators if they account for more than 3% of all tests in a given category and location during a specific quarter.
The providers were all ranked based on average download speed (from highest to lowest), although they’ve also included figures for upload speeds and network latency (milliseconds), which is always nice to have. But we still find it a bit unusual that they included Three UK into the list, since mobile broadband connections are significantly more variable than fixed lines.
| Internet Provider | Download [Mb/s] | Upload [Mb/s] | Ping [ms] |
| Virgin Media | 283.7 | 52.9 | 24 |
| Vodafone | 207.1 | 93.2 | 23 |
| EE (BT) | 151.7 | 38.7 | 21 |
| Sky Broadband | 147.9 | 46.9 | 16 |
| TalkTalk | 107.9 | 38.8 | 18 |
| Three UK | 97.8 | 20.8 | 45 |
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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I feel like this list is more about the product tiers and offerings and consequent customer mix a provider has than anything else. If any of these fixed line providers decided that all their customers now got their fastest package, they would win the crown.
You also may need to factor some demographics related to equipment use. How many people have gigabit connections but don’t have the equipment to exploit those connections.