Report: Choosing the best home broadband, mobile and landline provider

Phones and broadband Service quality Research, statistics and data
Published: 18 May 2023
Last updated: 10 August 2023

This is Ofcom’s seventh annual report on how customer service levels for residential customers compare across the telecoms industry.

This report covers customers’ experiences in 2022. Overall customer satisfaction levels were high, particularly for mobile services, although this has decreased since 2021. Some aspects of quality of service have improved; for example, complaints made to Ofcom have reduced when compared with the previous year. However, the percentage of customers who had a reason to complain increased for both landline and mobile services.

Satisfaction with complaints handling remained the same as in 2021 and there is still room for further improvement. In addition, average call waiting times and call abandonment rates have increased since 2021. At a time when many customers have experienced significant price rises, it is vital that providers do more to improve customer service and put treating customers fairly at the heart of their business.

We are confirming the change to the frequency of Ofcom’s Comparing Customer Service Trackers, which will now be conducted biennially and will next be run in Q4 2024, for publication in 2025.

The three Comparing Customer Service (CCS) trackers – the Customer Satisfaction Tracker, the Reason to Complain Tracker and the Complaints Handling Tracker – provide Ofcom with data about customer satisfaction levels and satisfaction with complaints handling processes across the residential landline, mobile, fixed broadband and pay-TV services, and how these compare by provider and over time.

For more information about this change, please read our CCS confirmation of changes document (PDF, 90.5 KB).

Full report

Interactive report

Annexes

This is Ofcom’s sixth annual report on how customer service levels compare across the telecoms industry.

We publish it to help people make informed decisions about which provider is best for them, as part of our work to ensure fairness for customers.

By shining a light on the performance of the UK’s main mobile, broadband and landline providers, this report allows people to look beyond price and see what level of service they can expect from different providers. It also acts as an incentive for providers to improve their level of customer service.

This report covers customers’ experiences in 2021 amid the continued impact of the Covid-19 pandemic. Overall customer satisfaction levels were high, in particular for mobile, and it is also pleasing that complaints to Ofcom fell for most providers in 2021. However, for some aspects of customer service it was another challenging year: some customers continued to experience lower levels of service quality at times and service levels did not return to 2019 levels across the industry.

Full report

Interactive report

Annexes

This is Ofcom’s fourth annual report on how service levels compare in telecoms.

We publish it to help people make informed decisions about which provider is best for them as part of our work to ensure fairness for customers.

By shining a light on the performance of the UK’s main mobile, broadband and home phone providers, this report allows people to look beyond the price and see what level of service they can expect from different providers. It also acts as an incentive for providers to improve their customer service.

This report covers customer experiences in 2019 and customer satisfaction levels in January 2020, before the Covid-19 pandemic came to the UK. The pandemic is likely to have affected the levels of service received by telecoms customers (in areas such as new services and repair times) and this impact will be covered in our next annual report, to be published in 2021.

Update 4 May 2021

This is an amended version of the report published on 25 September 2020. It includes revised call abandonment and faults per 1,000 customers data.

Update 25 September 2020

This is an amended version of the report published on 21 August 2020. It now includes more comprehensive data relating to BT’s total loss of service faults. This replaces the smaller sample of said data in the original version of the report.

Full report

Interactive report

Annexes

This is Ofcom’s third annual report on how service levels compare in telecoms.

As part of our work to ensure fairness for customers, we want to help people make more informed decisions about which provider is best for them. We also want to encourage providers to improve the quality of their services.

By shining a light on the performance of the UK’s main mobile, broadband and home phone providers, this report allows people to look beyond the price of a service.

Full report

Interactive report

Interactive report: Choosing the best broadband, mobile and landline provider 2018

Annexes

Research

This is the first annual service quality report to be published by Ofcom. It shows the quality of service experienced by customers of the UK’s largest landline, broadband and mobile providers in 2016. The information has been collected through our own research, and directly from providers.

The report follows on from the initial conclusions of Ofcom’s Digital Communications Review, published in February 2016, which found that improvements were needed in quality of service across the telecoms industry. We therefore committed to publish an annual report that would enable consumers to compare providers’ service quality.

We will publish service quality information at least annually, to update consumers on how providers are performing, and we will consider more frequent updates where appropriate.

Summaries

Full report

Interactive report

This interactive tool helps you compare provider performance in detail. You can use it to check how your provider is doing in the areas most important to you. We have a desktop tool and a mobile version (note: this link takes you to an external site).

Annexes

Research

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