A new study has ranked the UK’s broadband providers from most to least reliable internet service, and the results may surprise you. Virgin Media was named Britain’s most reliable broadband provider, but it’s bad news if you are a Three customer.
Data released by OpenSignal shows Virgin Media tops the chart for most reliable web connection in the UK with a score of 767, followed closely by local broadband firms Community Fibre and Gigaclear on 750 and 735 respectively.
OpenSignal is a network analytics company that crunches data and numbers to record the real-life performance of broadband connections. In this study, it gave ISPs a score from 100 to 1000 based on connectivity, the ability to complete typical web tasks with interruption, and how well those tasks can be performed online.
Those tasks could range from typing out an email to playing demanding online video games.
Big hitters such as Vodafone, BT and Sky Broadband only scored in the 600s, while bottom of the pile was Elon Musk’s Starlink on 405. Starlink uses satellite-delivered broadband to customers who do not want – or do not have access to – fixed line fibre broadband, which goes some way to explaining reliability issues, as satellite connectivity can often be patchy.
“Our Virgin Media users have the most reliable fixed broadband experience in the U.K,” OpenSignal said. “The ISP beats its closest rivals — Community Fibre and Gigaclear, which are statistically tied for second place — by around 25 points.”
This is at odds with the latest Ofcom report that said Virgin Media was the second-most complained about broadband provider in Britain recently. The provider has also ranked most complained about in previous similar reports.
“However, only 22 percent of complaints about Virgin Media’s fixed broadband service were about faults, services and provisioning, well below the industry average of 37 percent,” OpenSignal said, suggesting the reliability of Virgin’s network is not intrinsically linked to the number of complaints it receives.
Conversely, popular provider Three UK scored 451, only one place above Starlink.
Here is the reliability list in full, the higher the score the better:
- Virgin Media – 767
- Community Fibre – 750
- Gigaclear – 735
- KCOM – 719
- Vodafone – 689
- Hyperoptic – 677
- Plusnet – 671
- BT – 655
- Sky Broadband – 651
- TalkTalk – 643
- EE – 606
- Zen Internet – 595
- Three UK – 451
- Starlink – 405
Though OpenSignal argues that Ofcom’s complaint-based reports are misrepresentative, OpenSignal’s rankings are open to scrutiny. The providers at the top of the list such as Community Fibre and Gigaclear are smaller providers who service smaller areas of the UK with hyper-fast fibre broadband – so their customers are likely to, on large, have faster more reliable connections.
The providers lower down the list such as BT, Sky and TalkTalk will have many more thousands of subscribers, increasing the likelihood of reliability issues, Those ISPs also still have customers on older, slower copper-based broadband that may not be able to keep up with the demands of modern online tasks, therefore also reflecting lower perceived reliability.
Putting Starlink in the list also is debatably unfair given the delivery of broadband over satellite is quite different to the fixed-line offerings of the listed rival firms.
