The most recent data on broadband speeds reveals that a significant number of households in the UK are still facing challenges with internet connections that do not meet the government’s minimum requirements. Broadband Genie’s testing team conducted an analysis of over 144,000 consumer speed tests, highlighting the struggle for some users to achieve download speeds of at least 10Mbps, which is considered the baseline for a satisfactory broadband service by the UK government.
For context, downloading a full HD movie with a 10Mbps connection would take more than 40 minutes, whereas the same download would only take around 5 minutes with a 100Mbps connection.
Among the providers assessed, mobile broadband users relying on 4G and 5G networks experienced the most common issues with slow speeds. Vodafone’s Mobile Broadband service ranked at the bottom, with 34.1% of customers failing to meet the 10Mbps download speed threshold. Three Home Broadband followed closely with 28.8% falling below the standard, and EE Mobile Home Broadband trailed with 25.8%.
Within the traditional fixed-line broadband sector, EE showed the weakest performance, with 24.3% of its customers failing to reach the 10Mbps download speed, and 21% missing the minimum 1Mbps upload speed requirement. Following EE were TalkTalk, Plusnet, and BT in terms of customer speed performance.
The list of providers with the highest percentage of customers below the 10Mbps threshold includes Vodafone Mobile Broadband at 34.1%, Three Home Broadband at 28.8%, and EE Mobile Home Broadband at 25.8%.
On the other end of the spectrum, the best-performing providers were smaller alternative broadband networks known as alt-nets. Zzoomm, Hey! Broadband, Onestream, toob, and Squirrel all had fewer than 2% of customers falling below the government’s minimum speed standard.
Broadband Genie strategist Alex Tofts expressed surprise at the number of customers not meeting the designated “decent” broadband speed set by the government. Tofts emphasized the importance of reporting consistently slow connections to providers and highlighted that customers have the option to terminate contracts without penalties if providers fail to address persistent speed issues and are part of Ofcom’s Speed Code of Practice.
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