BT Broadband review: Old reliable is living off its reputation alone

It’s becoming harder and harder to make a case for BT Broadband in 2025. Last year we reported that the BT Group was beginning to drive its broadband customers towards EE. A year later, you can still order BT Broadband connections, but there’s no compelling reason to choose BT Broadband over its own stablemates (EE and Plusnet), let alone the award-winning rivals Vodafone and Zen Internet.

BT is very much living off its brand name rather than anything that makes it stand out from the crowd. Overall it finished fifth in our survey, although it did pick up a Highly Commended award for reliability, with 67% of customers pleased with how stable their connection was.

Speed was, somewhat surprisingly, BT’s highest score, with 78% of customers pleased with the performance of their line. However, EE offers faster top speeds than BT, with lines peaking at 1.6Gbits/sec compared to BT’s maximum of 900Mbits/sec.

Value for money was middling, while fewer than half of BT customers said they were satisfied with the company’s customer service.

There’s no great cause for alarm for BT customers, but is there any reason to join the company now? Let’s dig deeper into its tariffs.

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BT Broadband review: Fibre Essentials, Fibre 1 and Fibre 2

Note: Prices were correct at the time of writing but are liable to change.

These three packages are designed for customers who aren’t in full-fibre areas. There’s no difference in price between Fibre Essentials and the slightly faster Fibre 1, which means the only reason to choose that is because your line isn’t fast enough to support the greater speed.

Fibre 2 pushes the maximum speed to 74Mbits/sec, but when even more highly rated stablemate Plusnet offers this for £4/mth less, it’s hard to find any justification for picking BT.  Especially as BT wants £32 up front for Fibre 2, whereas Plusnet imposes no upfront cost. They’re both using the same infrastructure, after all, so there’s going to be no significant difference in performance.

BT Broadband review: Full Fibre 100, 300, 500 & 900

The full-fibre lines offer a good spread of different speed options, although again the prices are hardly keen.

Compared like-for-like against Plusnet, BT’s connections are between £1 and £7 per month more expensive for the same speeds. Also watch out for the seemingly random application of upfront fees. The 100, 500 and 900 tariffs have no upfront fee, but the 300 has a £32 upfront cost.

It’s certainly not because 300 customers get a better router. All BT customers get the ageing Smart Hub 2, which is based on Wi-Fi 5 technology – two generations behind the latest Wi-Fi 7 equipment.

BT also offers various add-ons. You can get Wi-Fi extenders to ensure the entire house gets Wi-Fi signal for an extra £10/mth, which is steep. You will almost certainly find it cheaper to buy your own extenders, although BT might not support them if you struggle to get them working.

BT also offers Hybrid Connect 4G backup in case your landline connection fails, for an extra £8/mth. EE offers this for £0.55 less per month, but even that’s quite a steep fee for something that might only be used for a few hours each year, if that.

There are various TV packages that can be bundled with the broadband too.

BT Broadband review: Coverage

Like EE and Plusnet, BT Broadband gets all of its connections from the Openreach network. That means just over half of the country is served by full-fibre lines and almost all of the rest are left with fibre-to-the-cabinet.

Other broadband providers, including our two award winners, have deals with multiple fibre networks and so may be able to offer faster speeds than BT can in your area.

BT Broadband review: Performance and customer satisfaction

BT’s speeds were generally well regarded by the customers we surveyed. A healthy 78% said they were happy with the speed they were receiving, although that score leaves BT in joint fifth place in the speed satisfaction table.

Reliability was its strongest card, with 67% of customers satisfied – a score bettered only by Virgin Media and good enough to land BT a Highly Commended award in this category. Just over half of customers said they had chosen BT for the reliability of the service, which was the highest score of any of the eight providers on test here.

Given the premium BT customers pay over other broadband providers in the same group, it’s hardly surprising to see a relatively lowly 70% satisfaction for value for money, leaving BT second from bottom. Customer service is also questionable, with fewer than half of customers happy.

It’s interesting to note that 65% of the BT customers we surveyed had been with the company for two years or more, with 40% staying loyal for more than five years. With better speeds, prices and service on offer elsewhere, you wonder if many customers are just sticking with old reliable, rather than rewarding a high-performance provider.

BT Broadband review: Verdict

BT Broadband’s reliability may be one reason why millions of customers haven’t looked elsewhere. But when you consider that several rival providers are cheaper, offer better customer service and faster connections, it’s hard to make a good case for switching to BT Broadband at this time. Especially as the company’s focus appears to be on EE.

Methodology

Unless otherwise stated, all figures are drawn from a comprehensive survey conducted by Expert Reviews in December 2024, targeting a representative sample of 2,162 UK residents aged 18 and over. This sample size allows for statistically significant analysis across eight internet service providers, ensuring confidence in the results.

The figures are derived from responses to six survey questions targeting value for money, speed, customer service and reliability. We then take an average of these scores to produce an overall satisfaction metric, which we use to name our winner and runner-up.