O2 Broadband review

This review was updated in July 2011 to reflect the findings of our latest survey.

For a second year on the trot, O2’s home broadband service has impressed our readers with its reliability and ease of setup. Although its overall customer satisfaction rating has fallen a little, its score of 84 per cent is still comfortably above average.

It’s not widely available as BT’s ADSL service because O2 uses its own equipment in local exchanges rather than simply reselling BT’s broadband bundles. Prices are extremely competitive, though, especially for O2 mobile phone customers who receive a £5 monthly discount and don’t have to pay the £25.32 setup fee.

Since our last survey, O2 has more clearly stated the data allowances of its different packages. The Basics provides 20GB a month – not too shabby for £13.50 (or £8.50 for O2 mobile customers). The All Rounder includes 100GB for £17.50 a month, while The Works costs £26 and includes a whopping 250GB. The prospect of written warnings and possible service suspension for exceeding these limits might sound a little schoolmasterly but we prefer it to automatic fees or a throttled service.

All three packages have download speeds of 20Mbit/s, but The Works can upload at 2.5Mbit/s, rather than the more modest 1.3Mbit/s of the other two. O2 also includes free text messages, sent using a web interface – The Basics includes 100 texts, rising to 200 and 500 for the pricier packages.

O2’s more expensive packages are a good deal for heavy downloaders, and the company’s support and reliability are excellent. If you’re an O2 mobile customer, this is definitely the way to go. Those on other mobile networks get a pretty good deal, too. With a generous 100GB allowance and excellent customer feedback, O2’s All Rounder is our Best Buy.

See the next page for a full break-down and individual ratings of O2’s services and the results of our broadband survey.

Broadband survey performance results 2011

These results were compiled from our online survey, where users were asked to rate their broadband supplier. In the case of customer satisfaction, this is an average of whether users would recommend their supplier and if they’re planning on staying with their current supplier.

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