North West's top broadband provider named and its not Virgin, Sky, BT or TalkTalk

The latest data on the UK's fixed broadband networks has revealed a surprising winner, with one internet provider topping the charts in all five key measurements. According to a new report from Opensignal, Virgin Media has outperformed its competitors in consistent quality, download speed, upload speed, video experience and reliability experience, beating close rivals such as Sky, BT and TalkTalk.

The report analysed the real-world broadband experiences of users across the UK between July 1 and September 28 2024, also examining performance stats across 12 different regions. Opensignal, which independently measures the performance of millions of devices worldwide daily through its app and several partners, collated data from customers of Three, BT, EE, Plusnet, Sky, TalkTalk, Virgin Media and Vodafone.

In all categories, Virgin Media outshone its competitors, particularly in download speed. The average speeds for Virgin broadband customers across the UK was 157.4Mbps, more than double that of its closest rival, Vodafone, at 77.5Mbps. At the bottom of the list was EE, with a national average speed of 45.9Mbps.

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Virgin outperformed Vodafone with a national high score of 90.4 percent for consistent quality of connection, according to Opensignal. This metric "measures how often a network, from the perspective of a single device once connectivity is established, meets the requirements for common applications", taking into account speed, latency and other factors, reports the Express.

Three scored the lowest at 72.3 percent, and also had the lowest reliability score of 443/1000, being the only provider to