There are over 150 broadband providers in London. Yeah, that’s right, 150. No matter how you look at it, that’s a lot. Therefore, how do you choose which one is the best? Rest assured, we will not go through all 150. If we did that, this blog post would take 6 days to read and who has the time? Contact us to learn more about flat in london rent

Instead, we will go through the top five best broadband providers and detail what makes them stand out from the competition. We did, however, find it important to mention a few more than 5 because of the honorable mention section.

If you are looking to move to a new broadband provided, we have all the details. You can find out everything you need to know below.

How to Choose Your Broadband Provider

There are a few factors you should keep in mind while trying to determine which broadband provider would best meet your needs. These factors will be more important to some than to others depending upon what will best fit your needs.

Some of the factors are pretty obvious while others might not be.

• Download Speeds
• Number of Users
• Type of Use
• Bundled Services
• Price

Download Speeds

While this might seem pretty straightforward, it can be a bit tricky. The adverts might show all of these flashy images about how fast their download speeds are and all of the amazing things you can do with their product, not all of us need the Internet to travel at the speed of light. An average user, not streaming movies, who are simply surfing Internet sites and sending emails does not need those lofty speeds.

Type of Use

If your basic use is only checking email, a bit of shopping, and perhaps watching a silly cat video now and then, you’re not going to need the fastest download speeds now. Therefore, why pay for it?

However, if you are a gamer or stream a lot of movies, then you’ll want to pay a bit more attention to the bandwidth offered. Let us be honest, no one wants to be watching an emotional rollercoaster of a movie that one minute it is lifting our spirits and our hearts, and then right at the climax, tissue clutched in hand, tears in our eyes, the buffering symbol pops up, and the movie stops while the ISP gathers the digital bits making up the next part of the movie. Nobody wants to watch a movie like that.

Number of Users

Another thing to consider about the speed of the broadband service you choose is how many users are connecting to the service. Certainly, you, with your affinity towards crazy cat videos, might not need the fastest download speed but if you have three or four others in the household who are gamers and streaming some serious content from Netflix or Now TV then you will want to choose a broadband provider with a faster download speed. The more users who are on your broadband connection, the more bandwidth and associated download speed you will need to ensure everyone has a good connection with no lag time no matter what content they are streaming.

Price

To most people, price is an important factor in any service we purchase. It’s the same with broadband. There are so many options available. The difference with broadband with regard to price is to find a balance between price and service. Sure, you could go ahead and pay top dollar for a premium service but what if you are paying for services you don’t need? If you don’t need the fastest speed, then why pay for it? On the other hand, you don’t want to just take the cheapest provider available to save a pound or two per month if the download speeds are too slow. Remember, we don’t want those crazy cat videos to buffer in the middle of watching them. Therefore, you should find a balance between the broadband services offered and the associated price.

Bundled Services

Many Internet Service Providers have bundled services like cloud storage, digital TV programming, and broadband Internet connectivity. In most cases, by bundling these services, customers can save quite a bit of money each month. Of course, you need to decide which services you need. If you only need Internet broadband and no other services, it doesn’t make sense to bundle a package.

Broadband Providers in London

With over 150 broadband providers in London, it took a bit of effort to narrow them down to the top 5 best providers. After some heavy lifting, we did it. Below you can check them out and consider whether they meet your needs or not.

EE Broadband 

Offering a great set of mobile bundled data deals with great coverage and impressive speeds, EE Broadband has plans with 10Gb mobile data for those customers on the move. Customers who need more mobile content can bump their plan to 20Gb per month. Their broadband plans have no download limits so you can watch those cat videos to your heart’s content. EE Broadband had an 87% satisfaction rate from online surveys.

Bottom Line: 35 Mbps average speed at £27.99 a month

Virgin Media Broadband

For the last ten years, Virgin Media has been at the top of the list for London’s fastest broadband provider. Their fibre broadband plans average download speed of 362 Mbps which is more than enough for even the most avid video game playing and content streaming family. Virgin Media was also highly rated with an 85% satisfaction rate. While their broadband service was among the best, their customer service was rated poorly with lengthy response times to problems reported both via phone and webchat.

Bottom Line: 108 Mbps average speed at £44 a month

BT Broadband

The largest Internet provider in all of the UK, BT Broadband has the widest reach when it comes to broadband coverage in the nation. The download speed doesn’t compare to either Virgin Media or EE Broadband. Their prices aren’t as competitive as one might hope either. The minimum contract term to go with BT Broadband is 18 months. There is a slight savings in price if customers sign for a longer-term contract. One way to save is to bundle their television package with your broadband service. With a satisfaction rating of 78%, they too suffered from a lack of solid customer service.

Bottom Line: 59 Mbps average speed at £22 a month

Sky Broadband

Toward the upper end of the price spectrum, Sky Broadband specializes in packaging different digital components at a lower price. Their broadband speeds aren’t comparable to other high-end broadband providers but when you couple a mobile data package and television package with your broadband plan, you could save a reasonable amount of money.

While they might not be blowing anyone away with their download speeds, they do have the best-rated customer service in the market. Their customer satisfaction rate was an impressive 90%.

Bottom Line: 59 Mbps average speed at £20 a month

Hyperoptic

This company is stark raving mad when it comes to speed. It offers the fastest fibre to home network average speed with an incredible 900 Mbps. Even at its least expensive plan, the speed remains a satisfactory 30 Mbps. Building their own fibre network, they offer unlimited plans with free installation and their high-end router.

It also has a 90% satisfaction rate for customer service. Therefore, is this the highest-rated broadband provider? If it was purely rated on speed, then certainly. However, it has such limited availability that it simply couldn’t be the highest rated.

Bottom Line: 50 Mbps average speed at £22 a month

Honorable Mention

While those are the five highest-rated broadband providers other companies stood out not necessarily because they were the best rated for download speeds or customer service but simply because they were a great deal for the packages they offered. If you could have slightly less speed at half the price would you consider it? More than a few might, we bet. Well, if you are a budget-minded individual then check out the honorable mention list to see if one of these might work for your situation.

• Post office – 11 Mbps average speed at £17 a month
• Now Broadband – 11 Mbps average speed at £18 a month
• Plusnet – 10 Mbps average speed at £18.99 a month
• TalkTalk – 11 Mbps average speed at £24.50 a month

In Conclusion

Only you know the services you want and the speed you can live with. A household with five people online throughout the day, downloading and streaming a good deal of content will need far more bandwidth than a household of two who rarely stream much content. Think of it this way. If the bandwidth isn’t adequate, that household of five will constantly complain about the slowness of the connection. Who wants to deal with that?

While the robust download speeds of some of the providers listed above might suit some families, they don’t suit all Londoners.

If you are a single person who does a bit of online shopping and sends a few emails each day, then one of the honorable mention service providers might do the trick. It boils down to what you are looking for, how much you are willing to pay for it, and the download speed you are comfortable with.

Whether it is the highest-rated company, the fastest connection speeds, or the best customer services, I hope I’ve given you some information to consider and a few things to think about. Also, as you consider your options, why not watch another crazy cat video?