United Kingdom
Opensignal is the independent global standard for analyzing consumers' connectivity experiences. Our industry reports are the definitive guide to understanding what happens when people use their mobile and broadband connections in their daily life.
United Kingdom
Opensignal is the independent global standard for analyzing consumers' connectivity experiences. Our industry reports are the definitive guide to understanding what happens when people use their mobile and broadband connections in their daily life.
Key Findings
National
Virgin Media sweeps the overall experience table
Virgin Media wins all five of the overall experience awards outright. This means that out of the UK’s national broadband providers, our Virgin Media users have the best available experience when streaming video, the fastest average download and upload speeds, and the most reliable, and the most consistent fixed broadband experience.
Regional
Community Fibre dominates the London fixed broadband experience
Community Fibre wins four out of five awards outright in London. In addition, it and Hyperoptic are joint winners for Video Experience in England’s capital, given their statistically tied scores of 77-77.4 points on a 100 point scale.
YouFibre performs strongly in the North of England
YouFibre is the most awarded provider in the North West and North East, winning all the awards in both regions, either outright or jointly. It is also the most awarded provider in the East Midlands and narrowly achieves the same distinction in Yorkshire and Humber as it is the only provider in the region to win an award outright — Download Speed with a score of 273.4Mbps.
Hyperoptic is the most awarded ISP in Scotland
In Scotland, Hyperoptic is the outright winner of the Upload Speed, with a score more than 100Mbps faster than the runners-up (Zen and Vodafone). It is also the sole winner for Video Experience, with a lead of over two points over second-placed Virgin Media. In addition, Hyperoptic shares the Consistent Quality award with Virgin Media due to their statistically tied scores of 88.5-90.8%. These two providers are also joint winners for Download Speed with tied scores of 158.4-175Mbps.
Virgin Media wins all five awards in Wales and is the most awarded provider in Northern Ireland
In Wales, Virgin Media wins four out of five awards outright, while also sharing the Video Experience award with EE and Sky. In Northern Ireland, it wins the Download Speed awards outright, while also being a joint winner in the other three categories. Virgin Media, in Northern Ireland, also shares the Consistent Quality and Reliability Experience awards with Plusnet and the Video Experience award with Plusnet and Fibrus. Local ISP Fibrus — which recently hit the 100,000th customer mark — is the only other provider in Northern Ireland to win an award outright — Upload Speed with a score of 54.9Mbps.
Market Overview
In this report, Opensignal has analyzed the real-world fixed broadband experience of our users across the U.K. and then separately across 12 of its regions. To reflect the varying ways in which fixed broadband is used, we have included five different measures of user experience: Consistent Quality, Download Speed, Upload Speed, Video Experience and Reliability Experience.
This is the first time that we have included Reliability Experience in a UK fixed broadband experience report, after previously reporting on it in our analysis published in August 2024. As was the case back then Virgin Media is in first place for this metric. Reliability Experience measures the ability of a household to connect to the internet and to successfully complete 'uninterrupted' tasks across multiple devices, encompassing work and recreational activities. While Reliability Experience incorporates and expands upon elements akin to Consistent Quality, it uniquely includes assessments of initial connectivity and continuous completion of tasks, making it more comprehensive in scenarios involving multiple simultaneous connections.
For our national award tables, we have only included the providers with comparable national scale of geographic footprint – those that are reportable across all our metrics in at least 11 out of 12 regions. In our regional assessment, we have further analyzed the providers that have a significant presence in their selected regions.
With our overall experience awards, we are assessing the real-world experience of our users measured across all broadband technologies. As a consequence, the mix of plans and speed tiers selected by users for any given ISP will influence its scores. Doing so highlights the extent to which they have been able to migrate their users away from legacy technologies and offer high-speed plans at compelling prices.
In September 2024, Ofcom ruled that broadband providers must clearly and unambiguously state whether the network they use is full-fibre, part-fibre, copper or cable. The word ‘Fibre’ can no longer be used on its own and providers must give this information to consumers before they agree to buy a broadband service.
As we report on the brands that consumers can choose to buy fixed broadband services from rather than the companies that own them, we are reporting YouFibre and brsk separately. Both brands are still active, despite the recent merger between brsk and YouFibre’s owner, Netomnia.
This move is part of a wider industry trend as the altnet market has become crowded — partly due to heavy investment by private equity and other investors — and is now undergoing consolidation, with CityFibre acquiring Lit Fibre in May 2024 and Nexfibre completing its purchase of Upp in 2023. Further deals are likely, but some factors are working to slow this process, including the fact that integrating altnets is not an easy thing to do. There’s also an incentive for buyers to play the waiting game in the hope that potential targets will weaken.
BT Group recently announced as part of its H1 FY25 results to Sept 2024, that Openreach’s full FTTP network added 2.1 million premises to its coverage in H1 to cover 15.9m. It has also upwardly revised its FY25 build target to 4.2m and expects to reach 25m premises by December 2026. BT also said that its retail FTTP base has grown 35% YoY to three million subscriptions, of which 2.8 million is consumer.
National Fixed Broadband Experience
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Overall Experience
Definitions
Broadband Consistent Quality measures how often a network, from the perspective of a single device once connectivity is established, meets the requirements for common applications. Broadband Consistent Quality uses six key performance indicators: download and upload speeds, latency, jitter, packet loss, and time to first byte, setting thresholds appropriate for individual rather than multiple device usage. Metrics represent the percentage of users’ tests meeting these performance thresholds to support activities like watching HD video, completing group video calls, and gaming across all hours of the day.
Definitions
Measured in Mbps, Broadband Download Speed represents the typical everyday speeds a user experiences across a provider’s network.
Definitions
Measured in Mbps, Broadband Upload Speed measures the average upload speeds for each internet service provider observed by our users across their fixed networks. Typically, upload speeds are slower than download speeds, but this often depends on the technology used for broadband connections.
Definitions
Opensignal’s adaptive video experience quantifies the quality of video streamed to mobile devices by measuring real-world video streams over an operator's network. The metric measures users’ adaptive video experience using a Mean Opinion Score (MOS) approach inspired by International Telecommunication Union (ITU) studies which have derived a relationship between technical parameters of adaptive bitrate video streaming and the perceived video experience as reported by real people.
The videos tested are streamed directly from the world’s largest video content providers and include a wide selection of resolutions that dynamically match the network conditions, available bandwidth and device performance. Resolutions range from 144p to 2160p, which is also called 4K or UHD (Ultra High Definition). The model calculates a MOS score on a 0 to 100 scale by evaluating a number of parameters, including: the time to start playing the video, the quality of the video, the time playing each resolution, and the time spent re-buffering.
Definitions
Opensignal's Broadband Reliability Experience measures the ability of a household to connect to the internet and to successfully complete 'uninterrupted' tasks across multiple devices, encompassing work and recreational activities. While Reliability incorporates and expands upon elements akin to Broadband Consistent Quality, it uniquely includes assessments of initial connectivity and continuous completion of tasks, making it more comprehensive in scenarios involving multiple simultaneous connections.
Overall Experience
Regional Fixed Broadband Experience
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Related Analysis
Our Methodology
Collecting billions of individual measurements daily from over 100 million devices globally, Opensignal independently analyzes mobile and broadband user experience on every major network operator around the globe.
About Opensignal
Opensignal is the leading global provider of independent insights into consumers' connectivity experiences and choice of carrier. Our proprietary insights into mobile and broadband networks give operators the solutions they need to profitably compete and win, from executive level scorecards and public validation to pin-point level engineering analytics and consumer decision dynamics.
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Confidence Intervals
For every metric we calculate statistical confidence intervals indicated on our graphs. When confidence intervals overlap, our measured results are too close to declare a winner. In those cases, we show a statistical draw. For this reason, some metrics have multiple operator winners.
In our bar graphs we represent confidence intervals as boundaries on either sides of graph bars.
In our supporting-metric charts we show confidence intervals as +/- numerical values.
Why confidence intervals are vital in analyzing mobile network experience