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BT broadband is reliable, available almost everywhere and backed by the UK's biggest telecoms operation. It runs on the Openreach network at up to 900Mbps, with a fixed £3 to £4 monthly rise each spring shown at sign-up. You pay a premium for the badge and the extras. Whether that premium is worth it depends on which extras you actually use.
There is a kind of household where BT was never chosen, exactly. The line went in years ago, the bill goes out by direct debit, nobody has read it since 2021 and the whole arrangement runs on momentum. This review is for that household and for anyone wondering whether Britain's default broadband is worth what it charges as of June 2026. Sometimes it is. Let me walk you through when.
BT does the unglamorous things well. The connection stays up, the support is UK-based and the company behind it is not going to vanish in a refinancing. The catch is that BT sells the same Openreach lines as Plusnet, TalkTalk, Vodafone and a dozen smaller names, usually for several pounds a month more. It is the same strand of glass into your hallway whichever name prints the bill.
So what BT is really selling is the wrapping: a whole-home wifi guarantee, a mobile backup line, TV and mobile bundles and the reassurance of a very large company with a very large engineering department. For some households that wrapping is worth every penny. For others it is an expensive comfort blanket. We hold every provider to the same standard, which How we rank deals and where our data comes from sets out in full. By that standard BT scores well on the network and poorly on value.
BT's full fibre tiers average roughly 100Mbps, 300Mbps, 500Mbps and 900Mbps down, with uploads between about 30Mbps and 110Mbps. Where full fibre has not reached, the older Fibre 1 and Fibre 2 packages deliver around 36Mbps and 67Mbps over part-copper lines. Coverage is the strong suit. Openreach's full fibre now reaches around 9 in 10 premises and the build has not stopped, so the postcode lottery improves every quarter.
Two honest caveats. The uploads are asymmetric, so anyone pushing big files around all day will envy the altnets and their symmetric lines. And the range stops at 900Mbps. Openreach sells a 1.6Gbps tier, but BT hands that to its sister brand EE, which tells you exactly where the group wants its speed-chasers to go. If you are not sure what any of these numbers mean for an ordinary Tuesday evening, What broadband speed do I actually need? will tell you in five minutes. Most households discover they need far less than they are paying for.
We do not print BT's promotional prices here because they change constantly and the live deals do a better job. The mechanism matters more than the number anyway. Every BT contract now carries a fixed annual rise, stated in pounds at the point of sale: £3 a month for contracts taken from 10 April 2024 or £4 a month for contracts from 31 July 2025, applied on 31 March each year. Out-of-contract prices can rise by up to £4 from 1 March as well. On any contract taken out now that means an extra £4 a month from the following 31 March, on every tier from the cheapest to the dearest.
To BT's credit, it adopted pounds-and-pence rises even before Ofcom banned inflation-linked increases on contracts signed from 17 January 2025, so on new contracts the old CPI-plus-3.9% algebra is gone (legacy contracts signed under the old terms still carry it). The rise is spelled out in plain figures on the order page rather than worked out from an inflation print later. Just remember that a 24-month contract will absorb two of those rises, which means paying up to £8 a month more by the end than the price on the poster.
In Ofcom's complaints data for Q4 2025, BT landed around the middle of the pack, which is respectable for a company this size but hardly a trophy for the country's most premium-priced mainstream provider. Trustpilot is far harsher, hovering around 1.3, though Trustpilot scores for giant ISPs are mostly a register of cancellations gone wrong rather than a survey of the contented.
The fairer picture is mixed. BT has historically scored well in Ofcom's satisfaction research, its support is UK-based and the recurring complaint in user reviews is value rather than the line falling over. In other words the network does its job. The grumbling starts when the bill arrives.
The standard router is the Smart Hub 2, a wifi 5 unit that was a fine piece of kit when it launched and is now comfortably the oldest technology in any house that contains a teenager. A Smart Hub 3 with wifi 6 and a 2.5Gb port is due to launch in 2026, which is overdue and which we will credit when it actually ships.
The extras are where BT genuinely earns something. Complete Wi-Fi adds mesh discs and a signal guarantee for every room, which fixes the actual problem in most homes (the wifi, not the broadband). Hybrid Connect switches you onto EE's mobile network if the line goes down, shrinking an outage from a lost working day to a brief wobble. Digital Voice replaces the landline over broadband and the TV and mobile bundles fold everything into one bill, for better or worse.
If anyone in the household receives Universal Credit, Pension Credit, Income Support or income-based ESA or JSA, BT Home Essentials offers around 36Mbps for roughly £15 a month or 67Mbps for about £23. There are no mid-contract rises, no exit fees and eligibility is rechecked with the DWP each year. It is one of the strongest social tariffs from a major provider and BT does not shout about it nearly enough.
BT suits the household that wants maximum reliability, wifi in every room guaranteed in writing and one large company to blame when anything goes wrong, all on a single bill. If that is you, pay the premium with a clear conscience.
Everyone else should at least look around. Bargain-hunters can get the identical Openreach line from Plusnet or TalkTalk for less, so start with the Cheap Broadband Deals at your postcode. Speed-chasers wanting more than 900Mbps should compare the Gigabit Broadband Deals on offer, because EE, Virgin Media and the altnets all go faster than BT will sell you. And if you simply want to see what your address can get, the Full Fibre Broadband Deals list is the five-minute version of this entire review.
Yes, with caveats. The Openreach network is reliable, support is UK-based and extras like Complete Wi-Fi are genuinely useful. But BT sits around the middle of the pack for complaints in Ofcom's data and it charges a premium for line speeds other providers sell cheaper. Good, rarely the best value.
Pros: near-universal availability, dependable speeds, the Complete Wi-Fi guarantee, Hybrid Connect mobile backup and the Home Essentials social tariff. Cons: premium pricing, a 900Mbps ceiling, a dated wifi 5 router as standard, middling complaint figures and a fixed £3 to £4 rise every spring.
At most addresses both use the same Openreach lines, so speeds match. Sky had fewer complaints in Ofcom's Q4 2025 data and it lets you leave penalty-free when it announces a rise. BT counters with the stronger whole-home wifi guarantee. On service stats alone, Sky currently edges it.
Yes. Full fibre gives the low, stable latency gaming actually needs and even BT's mid tiers are more than fast enough. Use a wired connection where you can. Hybrid Connect pulls extra weight here too, since a mobile backup beats explaining a dropped ranked match to nobody in particular.
BT is the safe answer to the broadband question. Just know that the safety was priced in long before you asked.
Two names half the country defaults to when the contract runs out. One owns its cable network, the other reaches almost every front door. Here is how BT and Virgin Media actually stack up, and which one fits where you live.
