The UK's telecoms regulator has named and shamed the companies it receives the most customer complaints about, with certain brands cropping up more than others.
EE, TalkTalk, and Vodafone generated the most vitriol about fixed broadband, according to Ofcom. For landlines it was TalkTalk, Sky Mobile got the most for pay-monthly mobile, and EE again topped pay TV.
This covers complaints to the authority during the quarter from July to September last year (Q3 2025), relative to the size of the telecom operators' customer bases (i.e. per 100,000 customers).
For fixed broadband, EE, TalkTalk, and Vodafone all hit 10 grumbles per 100K customers, but BT and Virgin Media were not far behind with 9 and 7 - the average was 8. Plusnet had the fewest complaints at 4. The gripes in this category were mostly about faults, service, and provisioning.
With landline users, TalkTalk again provoked the most moans, with 7 per 100K, but EE was a close second with 6, while BT, NOW Broadband, and Plusnet all had 5. Utility Warehouse received just 1 grievance per 100K.
When it comes to pay-monthly mobile operators, the number of grievances was relatively low. Even the top scorer, Sky Mobile, generated just 3 per 100K customers, with the average being 2. Ofcom said criticisms pertained to how customer complaints were handled by the operator itself, or issues with faults, services, and provisioning in the case of Three.
For pay TV services, EE registered the most moans at 6 per 100K customers, but Virgin Media generated 5, Sky was on 3 and TalkTalk 2. Handling of complaints by the operators was again the biggest source of dissatisfaction, but switching providers was a close second.
The overall volume of complaints per 100K subscribers appears to have fallen noticeably over the past 15 years or so, according to Ofcom charts. Way back at the start of 2011, the regulator recorded at least 40 per 100K for broadband and 38 per 100K for landlines.
Pay-monthly mobile complaints peaked at 19 per 100K in Q4 of 2011 and have steadily declined since. The level of pay TV gripes went no higher than 8 per 100K in 2018.
Ofcom has produced interactive charts of the number of customer criticisms it received, so readers can check them out historically by sector or by a chart comparing different providers. The underlying data is available in CSV format for anyone who cares to analyze it themselves. ®
Source: The register