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Ofcom has today published their 2025 study of UK broadband, phone and mobile service quality, call waiting times, complaint levels, fault repairs, compensation and install times for the largest providers. For example, TalkTalk attracted the lowest satisfaction for broadband (77%) and Plusnet (BT) secured the highest (91%).
The regulator’s report – published once every two years – is based on data that they have gathered via a combination of consumer research (survey of people and social media posts etc.), submitted complaints and some other statistics that have been obtained directly from broadband, landline phone and mobile operators.
Overall, some 84% of fixed broadband ISP consumers claimed to be satisfied with their service (up from 82% two years ago), which compares with 88% for mobile (up from 87%) and just 73% for landline phone (down from 77%). Subscribers to Plusnet reported the highest levels of satisfaction with broadband (91%), while TalkTalk scored the lowest (77%).
In terms of mobile satisfaction, Vodafone secured the lowest score (84%), although this is generally still pretty good, while giffgaff and Tesco mobile did the best (both on 94%). The full results can be found below, and you can skip past this if you’d rather read about the service provision or repair performance of the major fixed line broadband ISPs.
Otherwise, this also reveals that KCOM had the longest call waiting times (7 mins and 53 seconds) of all broadband providers when contacting support, while O2 did the same for mobile operators (3 mins and 27 seconds). By comparison, Vodafone kept broadband customers hanging on the phone for the least amount of time (25 seconds) and the same was true of Lebara for mobile (just 15 seconds!).
We should add that just 23% of broadband customers, and 14% of mobile customers, said they had a reason to complain about their service or provider in 2025. However, satisfaction with how complaints are handled continues to be an industry-wide issue.
Ian Macrae, Ofcom’s Director of Market Intelligence, said:
“It’s encouraging to see industry rally to our call to improve things for their customers.
Call waiting times have come down for many providers and satisfaction with complaint handling is on the up. And we’re seeing competition in action, with smaller players challenging some of the bigger, well-established providers.
But there’s further to go. Not all companies have made the same progress and it’s still taking the industry too long to fix things when they go wrong. Our rules have made it easier than ever to switch provider, so if companies don’t act they may find customers voting with their feet.”
Next, we’ll have a look at fixed line service provision and repair times, as well as fault levels and the annual impact of Ofcom’s system for automatic compensation scheme.
New Service Provision and Repairs (Fixed Lines)
Ofcom’s study also examined how long it takes providers to deliver a new broadband or landline phone service to customers, as well as how long they may take to repair. Overall, 73% of all landline and broadband orders were delivered by the date agreed with the customer (down from 80% last year).
On average, it took 11 days to complete a new landline or broadband order (either a new service, home move or a change to service), which is an increase of 1 day since last year. Vodafone completed the lowest proportion of orders by the date agreed, at 60%. BT and EE each completed 69% of orders by the date agreed in 2024. Sky Broadband, TalkTalk and NOW TV (NOW Broadband) all completed more than 90% of orders by the date agreed.
Virgin Media was the quickest both to provide a service overall (4 days) and to provide a new service to a new customer (8 days). Elsewhere, ADSL services were installed most quickly, taking an average of 11 days to complete, while FTTC services took an average of 13 days (down from 15 days in 2023) and FTTP took 14 days (down from 15 days).
Across the major broadband and landline providers, in 2024 there were, on average, 44 faults of any kind a month per 1,000 customers, down from 47 in 2023. This includes any landline or broadband fault that took place, as opposed to only those that resulted in a total loss of service. Vodafone had the highest number of faults per 1,000 customers (56 faults per month), while KCOM had the lowest (16 per month).
However, it should be noted that not all faults resulting in total loss of service were the ISPs fault, and a lot of issues can occur within the customer’s domain (i.e. problems with in-home wiring or disconnections between devices).
Meanwhile, the average time to switch provider is 14 days, which is largely because Ofcom’s prior rules specified a similar minimum transfer period for most switches between providers (this is partly to allow time for checking, which reduces the risk from SLAMMING – being switched without your consent). The regulator’s new One Touch Switch (OTS) system eventually aims to do all of this in just 1 day, but it hasn’t been live long enough to impact this report.
Automatic Compensation Performance
Finally, we examine the impact from Ofcom’s automatic compensation (here) system after its fifth year of operation (97% of landline and 91% of broadband customers are covered by this), which compensates consumers by £9.98 per day for delayed repairs following a loss of broadband (assuming it isn’t fixed within 2 working days). Missed appointments can also attract compensation of £31.19 and a delay to the start of a new service would be £6.24 per day.
In 2024, signatories to the automatic compensation scheme paid £63m to consumers when things went wrong with their broadband and/or landline service, which is down from £67m in the previous year. A total of around 1 million payments were made across all three service issues (excluding compensation paid outside the scheme), which is down from 1.2m in the previous year.
Ofcom seems this as an encouraging sign “indicating fewer instances where things have gone wrong for customers“, which may be at least partly related to the rising take-up of full fibre lines.
Ofcom’s Service Quality Report 2025
https://www.ofcom.org.uk/../service-quality