UK telecoms complaints decline despite lockdown

You’d think people would moan more about telecoms services when that’s all they have, but the latest Ofcom numbers paint a different picture.

On the mobile side pretty much all the major operators and MVNOs have been moving in the right direction for the past year or so. Vodafone has put its BSS woes behind, such that Virgin Mobile has had to find another company to keep it in second place. The Q2 2020 most complained about mobile operator was Three, but even that was a perfectly acceptable rate of 6-per-100,000 customers.

Things get a bit more moany when you move to broadband, with the most complained about ISP being TalkTalk at a rate of 22-per-100,000 long-suffering punters. That was just enough to relegate Vodafone into second place for the first time in a year, but again the overall trend is downward.

The UK telecoms industry’s ability to keep improving its service, or at least prevent its customers from crying to Ofcom, is especially impressive considering this data is taken from a quarter when everyone was unusually reliant on it. The COVID-19 lockdown was in full effect for the entirety of Q2, with everyone compelled to conduct endless video conferences to retain their sanity. So credit where it’s due to our operators and long may it continue.