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- Highly rated for speed
- Simple line-up of packages
- Customer service remains a sore point
- Not highly recommended by its own customers
Those of us who have been writing about broadband providers for many years now could almost write Virgin Media’s review before even seeing the survey results: highly rated for speed, shame about the rest.
That’s pretty much where we are with Virgin Media in 2026. Virgin’s cable network was once head and shoulders above other providers when it came to speed, but the advent of full fibre networks has seen others surpass it. While Virgin Media’s top speed is now 2Gbits/sec in selected areas, Sky can now hit 5Gbits/sec. Virgin is gradually upgrading its network to full fibre in an effort to catch up.
Despite that, Virgin Media comes second only to Vodafone in terms of satisfaction with speeds in our survey, a sign that the company can still mix it with the best.
Alas, the same can’t be said for the rest of Virgin Media’s service. Only TalkTalk keeps Virgin off the bottom spot when it comes to customer service, value is middling, as is reliability. Still, Virgin Media may be the only high-speed option in certain areas, so if you’re willing to forgive its weaknesses, let’s explore what’s on offer.
Packages and pricing
M250, M500, Gig1
These three tariffs are available in every location that Virgin Media serves.
Virgin Media’s service once commanded something of a price premium, but it’s now very competitive. There’s not another provider in this test who will offer you 250Mbits/sec broadband for as little as £23.99 per month. The Gig1 price is also very competitive. EE will charge you another £14 month for gigabit fibre, for example.
Like those providers that are reliant on the Openreach network, Virgin Media’s upload speeds are nothing to email home about. They come in at roughly 10% of the upload speed, whereas providers such as Vodafone and Sky that have access to other fibre networks are able to offer upload speeds that match the download figure.
Virgin Media doesn’t state which Hub which you’ll get with new connections, but in autumn 2025 it introduced the WiFi Hub 5, which is a Wi-Fi 6 device. That’s not quite the latest Wi-Fi 7 standard, but it should be good enough for most households. Virgin will also offer the Hub 5 as a free upgrade to existing customers in a phased rollout, the company claims.
Price rises of £4 a year are baked into all of Virgin Media’s contracts. There are various TV and mobile phone bundles (Virgin Media merged with O2 some years ago) on offer, too.
Gig2
The Gig2 tariff is only available in areas served by Virgin Media’s full-fibre network. This tariff offers a download speed of 2Gbits/sec, double that of what’s available to customers whose connections are still relying on coaxial cable.
Even on this newer technology, Virgin Media chooses to keep the upload speeds at around 10% of the downloads, which is surprising given other full-fibre networks match download and upload speeds, and Virgin Media has long traded on its high-performance reputation. If you’re working from home and regularly need to upload big files, you might want to look elsewhere.
Coverage
Virgin Media’s network situation is a little complicated. In addition to its own cable network, it’s also the anchor tenant on nexfibre’s full fibre network, which is part-owned by Virgin Media’s parent company.
In total, Virgin Media reaches around 19m premises in the UK, which is around 60% of the country. Of that 19m, around 8m have access to the full-fibre network that offers the fastest Gig2 speeds.
Virgin Media is in the process of replacing that old, slower cable network with full fibre, but this process is going to take a few years.
Performance and customer satisfaction
Speed has long been Virgin’s trump card and so it remains. In our 2026 broadband survey no fewer than 89% of Virgin Media’s customers were satisfied with the speeds on offer; hardly surprising, given the slowest speeds it offers are 250Mbits/sec. Only Vodafone recorded better speed satisfaction scores.
But for all its good work with speed, other parts of Virgin Media’s offering let the side down. Customer service continues to be a problem. Although 73% said they were satisfied or very satisfied with Virgin’s customer service, a disgruntled rump of 10% were dissatisfied, leaving only TalkTalk with worse customer service scores.
Customers aren’t falling over themselves to recommend Virgin, either. Only 32% said they would recommend the provider, while 22% said they would actively discourage others from using the company.
The remaining scores were middling. Of the Virgin customers we surveyed, 79% were satisfied with the value on offer, and 57% were satisfied with the number of service dropouts. You can have all the speed in the world, but if your service isn’t ultra-reliable and it’s hard to reach customer services when things go awry, that kind of thing sticks in customers’ minds.
Should you choose Virgin Media broadband?
If you can live with the iffy customer service and middling reliability, however, Virgin Media will deliver some of the fastest broadband speeds available. It also offers some of the cheapest deals available, especially in the 250Mbits/sec to 1Gbits/sec speed bracket.
Survey methodology
Our survey, conducted in September 2025, targeted a representative sample of 1,544 UK residents aged 18 and over.
Across 14 questions, our survey captured data on 8 broadband providers. To ensure the integrity of our analysis, we applied a minimum sample size of 50 respondents, which qualified 7 of these for analysis.
Analysis Brands:BT, Sky, Virgin Media, Vodafone, Plusnet, TalkTalk, EE, Zen Internet
Eligibile brands: BT, Sky, Virgin Media, Vodafone, Plusnet, TalkTalk, EE
