Virgin Media sweeps the board in Opensignal’s broadband rankings

The report analysed the experience of Opensignal’s users across the country and then separately across 12 of its regions. It measured performance via five categories – namely Consistent Quality, Download Speed, Upload Speed, Video Experience and Reliability Experience.

Nationally Virgin Media walked away with all of them. It did well in Wales specifically as well, winning four out of five awards outright and sharing the Video Experience award with EE and Sky. In Northern Ireland, it won the Download Speed awards outright and was a joint winner in another three categories.

In other regions some other firms managed to get a look in. Community Fibre won four out of five awards outright in London, and shared Video Experience with Hyperoptic.

YouFibre was the most awarded provider in the North West and North East, winning all the awards in both regions either outright or jointly. In Scotland Hyperoptic was the outright winner of the Upload Speed and Video Experience, and shared the Consistent Quality award with Virgin Media. See full chart at the end of this piece.

“With our overall experience awards, we are assessing the real-world experience of our users measured across all broadband technologies,” states the report. “As a consequence, the mix of plans and speed tiers selected by users for any given ISP will influence its scores. Doing so highlights the extent to which they have been able to migrate their users away from legacy technologies and offer high-speed plans at compelling prices.”

The report also made reference to a recent merger between brsk and YouFibre’s owner, Netomnia, and says more deals of this kind are likely in the UK fibre space.

“This move is part of a wider industry trend as the altnet market has become crowded — partly due to heavy investment by private equity and other investors — and is now undergoing consolidation, with CityFibre acquiring Lit Fibre in May 2024 and Nexfibre completing its purchase of Upp in 2023. Further deals are likely, but some factors are working to slow this process, including the fact that integrating altnets is not an easy thing to do. There’s also an incentive for buyers to play the waiting game in the hope that potential targets will weaken.”

Regarding the potential of more consolidation in the UK and that above mentioned CityFibre purchase of Lit Fibre, the former said when the deal was completed in May this year that it was the first of several deals it expects to close over the next two years, in line with its stated goal to pursue altnet acquisitions as a path towards ‘and potentially beyond’ its 8 million premises target.