Cable.co.uk Broadband Awards 2024: Winners revealed
Dan Howdle | June 7th, 2024
There has been considerable deliberation and no small amount of push and shove between our experts (Cable.co.uk's top broadband team) arriving at our winners. This blog is designed to serve as an accompaniment to the awards proper, delving a little deeper both into why we chose the providers we did, the criteria, and what this year's winners mean for the evolving landscape of consumer broadband in the UK.
Our criteria
The awards have been selected by the broadband team at Cable.co.uk. The criteria varies by award because each has different considerations. For some awards those considerations are broad. For example, our best broadband provider has been selected on the basis of speed, equipment, customer service, pricing, and unique features. By contrast, other awards such as 'Best Provider for Equipment' have a ver specific focus only – in this case the router and accompanying accoutrements supplied to customers with their broadband deals.
Every provider has been considered for each category. However, there are some caveats. For example, we don't consider altnets under the 'Best Broadband Provider' category (and in a fair few others) because altnet providers aren't available to the vast majority of the UK market – they tend to be focused on either one, or a handful of locations. We have however tried to be as inclusive as possible with these very small providers, and going so far as to introduce a best altnet category. You will also see on the awards page itself, Best Business Broadband and Best Broadband-only Provider were won by altnets.
The winners
| Category | Winner |
|---|---|
| Best Broadband Provider | EE |
| Best TV Provider | Sky |
| Best Provider for Gamers | EE |
| Best Provider for Equipment | Vodafone |
| Best Customer Service | Sky |
| Best Value Broadband Provider | Vodafone |
| Fastest Major Broadband Provider | EE |
| Best Broadband Bundle | Virgin Media |
| Best Broadband Only Provider | BeFibre |
| Best Business Broadband | Lightspeed |
| Best Altnet Provider | brsk |
| Best Mobile Broadband Provider | Three |
| Most Popular Broadband Provider | Virgin Media |
This year's highlights
In this section, rather than just rattle out more information about the winners, we're going to take a look at the movements in the market since last year (2023) that have led to some of the most interesting changes and new top dogs.
EE Broadband is ahead of the game
Up until very recently, Virgin Media has been the unequivocal fastest widely available broadband provider. That has made the category very easy to decide in the past, and has always given Virgin Media a leg-up when it comes to being considered for the best broadband provider top spot. Recently, EE has lain siege to many of the accolades Virgin Media has been synonymous with for so long.
EE Broadband now has the fastest widely available broadband with its 1.6Gbps package, easily trumping the 1130Mbps offered by the previous fastest package, Virgin Media's Gig1. But it's not only speed where EE has made ground. Its 'Game Mode' feature isn't some useless branding gimmick. It is, in fact, the most advanced and meaning set of tools and features for gamers currently available, connecting players automatically to the fastest servers with the lowest latency, and offering the ability to prioritise game-related bandwidth. No one else offers anything like it, delivering EE Broadband the Best Broadband Provider, Best Provider for Gamers, and Fastest Broadband provider awards.
It's all very well being the fastest, but EE has come up with ways to actually leverage that speed in a way other providers simply don't offer.
TV king Sky is now also the customer service king
Sky winning in both these categories is going to smart a little for Virgin Media, since it's Sky's main competitor in the TV space, and highlights a slip in its customer service metrics over the past couple of years. Don't worry Virgin Media, you have won in two categories! However, when it comes to TV and customer service, Sky is now king.
In terms of TV, this is in large part thanks to the outrageous success of its amazing Sky Stream offering. While Virgin Media is still poking cables through your walls to deliver TV via a coaxial line, Sky is in the process of dumping its satellite TV service, Sky Q, in favour of Sky Stream, which offers the whole kit and caboodle in a discreet little box you can run on your wifi. Virgin Media does have its own stream service, but it offers a fraction of what Sky Stream does and to be honest, feels like an afterthought.
This year, Sky had the fewest complaints about it to Ofcom. That's not to say it had fewer complaints overall necessarily, but a very low number of complainants taking their grievances to Ofcom does mean Sky is at the very least now extremely good at dealing with complaints from customers to their satisfaction. Well done Sky.
Virgin Media has the best bundle and is our most popular provider
One way that Virgin Media continues to stride considerably ahead of the competition is the value it imbues its bundles. And there's no single bundle where that's more apparent than its top-tier Mega Volt. Yes, we are awarding this prize to Virgin Media's most expensive bundle, but hear us out. For £84.99 per month, you get Gig1 broadband (1130Mbps), Virgin's best router (Hub 5), over 230 channels of TV, including all Sky Sports and all Sky Movies, a Netflix subscription, inclusive anytime calls on your landline, and an O2 SIM with unlimited data, texts and minutes.
When you consider that bought separately, these services would set you back over £170 per month, suddenly that £84.99 seems like the best deal in the business. And in our opinion, it is. Virgin Media is also our most popular provider, with more Cable.co.uk visitors choosing a Virgin Media package than any other provider.
Vodafone Broadband offers the best value and the best router
We would never have anticipated Vodafone Broadband – a provider most don't even associate with home broadband – would snaffle two awards, but in evaluating everyone's offering, that's exactly the case. Vodafone's top packages come with the only router to feature Wi-Fi 6e – an even faster version of Wi-Fi 6. It's the fastest router offered as standard by any UK provider.
Vodafone's excellent routers, customer service and reliability make it even more surprising when you consider that it's out and out one of the cheapest broadband providers in the country. Typically, budget providers offer their service without frills. You'll get a router that's anything from average to downright bad and good luck when something goes wrong. Somehow, Vodafone manages to offer exception equipment and service for less than almost anyone else.
And the rest
Apart from our biggest categories, further awards have gone to BeFibre, Lightspeed Broadband, brsk, and Three Broadband. You can find out what they won and why they won it on our full rundown of award winners.
Well done to all those who snagged an award this year, and to those who didn't, there's always next year. You know what to do!