Expert Reviews Best Broadband Awards 2024: The results

You’re probably being bombarded with offers to switch your broadband to a new provider, but before you make that critical decision, listen to the wisdom of the crowds. We’ve surveyed thousands of broadband consumers across the country to find out what they think about the performance of their broadband provider, giving you a valuable insight into whether those offers are worth considering or not.

The Expert Reviews Best Broadband Awards are spread across multiple categories. We asked our survey respondents to rate the speed, reliability and value for money they get from their broadband provider, as well as asking them to rate customer service and their experience with the company’s contact centre.  

We hand out awards in each of these individual categories, and then combine the scores from the different awards to decide an overall winner and highly commended provider. 

This year we’ve got no fewer than 11 broadband providers in contention, ranging from household names such as BT, Virgin Media and Sky, to up-and-coming fibre providers such as Hyperoptic. 

Below you’ll find a summary of the award winners in each category, but if you want to dig deeper into a specific provider’s offering, we’ve got individual reviews of all 11 providers in our survey too, giving you a full breakdown of the broadband tariffs they offer and their performance in the various awards categories. 

If you’re thinking about changing your broadband provider in 2024, you need look no further. 

Expert Reviews Best Broadband Awards 2024

Overall winner: Zen Internet

Highly commended: Hyperoptic

Zen Internet is arguably Britain’s most highly respected broadband provider. A consistent award winner for the past 20 years or more, this Rochdale-based provider excels at customer service and is no slouch when it comes to delivering reliable, fast broadband connections, either.

An impressive 82% of Zen Internet customers told us they were satisfied with the company’s customer service, with 62% saying they were “very satisfied” – scores that blow every other provider out of the park. 

Reliability is rock solid too, with 88% of Zen Internet customers happy with the stability of their connection. A highly commended award for Speed shows that Zen isn’t sacrificing fast performance for reliability, either.

Hyperoptic is part of the new breed of full-fibre networks that are sprouting up all over the UK. What it lacks in geographical coverage, it makes up for with pure speed. An award-winning 87% of Hyperoptic customers were happy with the speed they received. Full-fibre is more reliable than relying on those old copper telephone cables too, and that’s one reason why Hyperoptic scooped a highly commended award for reliability. 

On the rare instance that customers do have problems, Hyperoptic’s contact centre appears to sort them out. A healthy 86% of Hyperoptic customers were happy with how the contact centre dealt with their problems, landing the company our award.   

Read our full Zen Internet review for more details

Read our full Hyperoptic review for more details

Best customer service: Zen Internet

Highly commended: Plusnet

As we discussed above, Zen Internet’s customer service stands out from the pack. No other provider got remotely close to matching its satisfaction scores. 

The most impressive thing about Zen’s customer service is how it outperforms much bigger rivals. Only 1 in 20 of Zen’s customers were unhappy with the company’s customer service, whereas one quarter Virgin Media customers are dissatisfied with its service, for example. 

Plusnet is part of the BT family, but it outshines stablemates BT and EE, as well as the rest of the providers we surveyed to claim a highly commended award in this category. Two-thirds of Plusnet customers were satisfied with the provider’s customer service.

Read our full Zen Internet review for more details

Read our full Plusnet review for more details

Best contact centre: Hyperoptic

Highly commended: Plusnet

When things go wrong, it’s imperative that a contact centre helps you get your connection back up and running quickly. Hyperoptic excels here, with 86% of its customers claiming to be satisfied with the resolution when they reached out to customer support for help. Only 3% were left unhappy. 

Plusnet claims its second highly commended award in this category. It gave Hyperoptic a run for its money, with 80% of customers left satisfied after reaching out to support, and only 9% left disappointed with the response. 

Again, it’s the bigger household names that are propping up the table in this category. Virgin Media and TalkTalk customers were the least satisfied with contact centre performance.

Read our full Hyperoptic review for more details

Read our full Plusnet review for more details

Most reliable: Zen Internet

Highly commended: Hyperoptic

This was an exceptionally close-run category, but Zen Internet just nipped ahead of Hyperoptic to claim the prize. 68% of Zen’s customers declared themselves very satisfied with the reliability of their broadband connection, nudging ahead of Hyperoptic, which scored 60%. Zen had slightly fewer discontents too, handing it the trophy. 

BT put up a strong showing in this category, with 79% of its customers satisfied with the reliability of their connection. And there’s encouraging news for Three customers too – even though its home broadband relies on mobile networks rather than wires, almost three-quarters of its customers were satisfied with the service’s reliability. 

Read our full Zen Internet review for more details

Read our full Hyperoptic review for more details

Best value: Three

Highly commended: Hyperoptic

Three’s home broadband proposition is unique amongst the 11 broadband providers we surveyed. While all the others rely on fixed-line cables, Three provides home broadband via its mobile network. And it does so at a bargain price, with both of its tariffs costing only £20/mth. 

That’s enough to tip the value award in Three’s favour, with 81% of the company’s customers happy with the value for money they are receiving, and only 3% not happy.

Hyperoptic, on the other hand, is delivering incredibly fast fibre lines at very reasonable prices. It registered 82% satisfaction among the customers we surveyed, though it received a higher proportion of discontent than Three dropped the company into the highly commended position. 

Read our full Three review for more details

Read our full Hyperoptic review for more details

Best speed: Hyperoptic

Highly commended: Zen Internet

When your entire network is based on full-fibre connections, speed is clearly going to be one of your strong suits. Hyperoptic nails this award, not least we suspect because it’s able to match its blistering download speeds with equally fast uploads. An impressive 87% of Hyperoptic customers were happy with their speed, with 64% saying they were very satisfied.

Zen pushed Hyperoptic right to the wire here. It too had an 87% satisfaction score, but with a smaller proportion of “very satisfied” customers (54%), it has to settle for the highly commended gong. 

Virgin Media compensates for an otherwise scratchy performance in our awards with a third place in the speed category. 

Read our full Hyperoptic review for more details

Read our full Zen Internet review for more details

Methodology

Unless otherwise stated, all of the figures are drawn from a survey commissioned by Expert Reviews, with respondents and data supplied by YouGov PLC. The total sample size was 6,316 adults and the survey was carried out online. The figures have been weighted and are representative of all Great British adults (aged over 18).

We asked people how likely they would be to recommend their broadband provider to others and to rate its customer service, reliability, value, and speed. Only the 11 ISPs with over 50 respondents are included in our results.