EE vs Virgin Media for broadband

Virgin Media offer competitive pricing on ultrafast and gigabit broadband speeds, while customers can also save money by bundling TV and mobile.

EE also offers fast broadband speeds, but pricing is higher and the EE TV service is arguably not as comprehensive as Virgin's.

Overall, Virgin Media is cheaper than EE with equally fast speeds and so far, at least, greater availability for gigabit broadband.

At a glance: EE vs Virgin Media

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Price

Winner: Virgin Media broadband deals are cheaper across all equivalent speed tiers than EE broadband.

Virgin Media broadband currently starts at just £23.50 per month for new customers taking their entry-level M125 Fibre Broadband plan.

In comparison, customers would have to pay £29.99 for EE's cheapest deal, although this does offer equivalent download speeds of 149Mb on average at peak times.

Both EE and Virgin Media offer free setup, and customers can choose to add a home phone with either provider, with the cheapest options being Virgin Media's M125 Fibre Broadband + Weekend Chatter and EE's Full Fibre 150 plan with calls on a pay as you go basis only.

In terms of faster plans, Virgin Media remains cheaper than EE, with their Gig1 Fibre Broadband plan coming in at just £39, compared to £44.99 with EE Full Fibre 900 Essentials.

Virgin Media only provide Gig1 and full fibre customers with a WiFi 6 enabled router, while all EE customers are now provided with the WiFi 6 enabled Smart Hub Plus.

It's possible to access a WiFi guarantee with boosters with either provider, although this could be cheaper with Virgin Media with their Gig1, Gig2 and Volt plans including their WiFi Max add-on at no extra cost, while this costs £7 per month with EE.

Lastly, both providers raise in-contract prices each year in April, with Virgin Media prices going up by £3.50 per month, while EE broadband prices go up by £3 per month (although plans with TV bundled go up by £5 per month).

Overall, Virgin Media's pricing starts out cheaper than EE at the basic level, and depending on package choices it's also possible to find better value for money with Virgin Media deals when adding additional services like home phone, WiFi boosters or TV, although customers will need to look out for particular pre-made bundles or use our free comparison tool.

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Broadband packages

Winner: Virgin Media and EE both offer an array of package choices to help customers get the bundle they want, although this generally tends to be cheaper with Virgin.

EE and Virgin Media offer customers a similar choice of broadband speed tier, with both providers also offering a multi-gigabit plan for those wanting the fastest broadband available.

Customers can also customise deals by adding a home phone service, WiFi boosters with a money-back WiFi guarantee, and various pay TV plans.

While all of EE's broadband plans can be customised by adding services from a range of optional add-ons, Virgin Media customers will want to look for the right pre-made bundle, where sometimes it can actually work out cheaper to take more services with specific packages like Volt.

Volt includes a home phone line with weekend calls, the WiFi Max guarantee, an O2 SIM, and other benefits including double data on all household O2 plans. Volt deals often offer the best value for money even when customers only want one of these extra services.

In terms of broadband-only plans however, here's how Virgin Media and EE look side-by-side for pricing:

Customers wanting to bundle a home phone line will have to pay an extra £5 per month with EE, and their WiFi guarantee costs an extra £7 per month.

The following Virgin Media bundles include both of these services, often for less:

In terms of availability, Virgin Media now cover over 60% of the UK, while EE full fibre broadband reaches over 50% so far.

Virgin Media are also starting to roll out full fibre connections with up to 2Gbps speeds ad optional symmetrical upload speeds, with over 1.5 million premises passed so far.

Overall, Virgin Media is cheaper than EE, including with extra services added, but customers will want to hunt out the best pre-made bundle to make sure they're getting the best value for money.

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Broadband speed

Winner: Virgin Media offer speeds up to 2Gbps with optional symmetrical uploads, while EE's top speed is 1.6Gbps with slower uploads, although this plan is more widely available.

Virgin Media launched a multi-gigabit plan, Gig2, offering average download speeds of 2Gb per second in February 2024. At the time, they also launched an optional symmetrical speed add-on to boost upload speeds up to the headline download speed.

These plans, delivered by full fibre connections, are only available in newly connected areas however, where Nexfibre have rolled out. So far, this is around 1.5 million premises, but is growing.

EE, owned by BT Group, provides both part and full fibre connections across the Openreach network, which covers 94% and 50% of UK homes respectively. Their fastest plan is the new 1.6Gbps speed tier, which few other providers, like Vodafone, also sell.

The major downside to Openreach's multi-gigabit 1.6Gbps option however, is that uploads are asymmetrical and only go as fast as 115Mbps, which is similar to the top speed of 110Mbps on the 1Gbps plan.

Here is EE's broadband speed choices:

While Virgin Media offers these broadband speed options:

Few households will be lucky enough to be able to access Virgin Media full fibre with optional symmetrical uploads, so most households will have comparable speed options between EE and Virgin Media.

However, Virgin Media do plan to upgrade their existing network to full fibre by 2028, and Openreach has also mentioned offering symmetrical uploads in 2025.

Customers deciding between EE and Virgin Media for broadband now though, will also find comparing their minimum guaranteed speeds useful as well.

Launched as a voluntary practice by Ofcom, minimum guaranteed download speeds aim to provide customers with a reassurance that should their broadband speed fall below a certain level they'll be free to leave their contract without penalty.

Speeds must be poor for at least 3 days in a row and providers usually request 30 days in which to try and resolve any problems before customers can exit their contracts early.

We tested a location with access to both Virgin Media cable broadband and EE full fibre broadband, and were presented with the following minimum speed guarantees:

It's noticeable that while Virgin Media's average download speeds are often faster than equivalent plans from EE, EE offer faster minimum guaranteed download speeds, which could reassure some customers.

Overall, Virgin Media have wider availability for their gigabit broadband and are also already offering symmetrical speeds in selection locations. However, EE also perform well for broadband speeds with a multi-gigabit plan and fast speed guarantees.

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Router

Winner: EE offer a WiFi 6 router with all of their broadband plans, while only customers taking Virgin Media Gig1 will get the newest Hub 5.

Virgin Media's latest router, the Hub 5, was first launched in October 2021 and was made available to customers on their fastest Gig1 plan throughout 2022.

However, roll on a few years and Virgin Media is still only supplying their Gig1 customers with the Hub 5 router, while those on slower plans get either the older Hub 3 or Hub 4.

The main difference between Virgin Media's Hubs is the Hub 5 supports WiFi 6 and WPA3 encryption, while the older Hub 3 and 4 only support up to WiFi 5 with WPA2 encryption.

Despite supporting an older WiFi protocol, the Hub 3 and Hub 4 do support mesh alongside the Hub 5, so all customers can access mesh boosters with the WiFi Max add-on.

In contrast, EE provide all of their broadband customers with the new EE Smart Hub Plus, launched in 2023, which supports dual-band WiFi 6, WPA3 encryption and mesh.

Here's how these devices look side-by-side:

EE's Smart Hub Plus and Virgin Media's Hub 5 have similar specifications, although the Hub 5 has a multi-gigabit LAN port for wired speeds over 1Gb per second.

It should be said, Virgin Media customers living in full fibre enabled areas will be provided with a Hub 5x, whichever package they choose, which has the same specifications as the Hub 5 but supports XGS-PON instead of DOCSIS 3.1.

EE customers can also pay an extra £10 per month to upgrade to the Smart Hub Pro, which upgrades the WiFi support to WiFi 7, or 802.11be. However, while some may be tempted by the upgrade it's worth checking exactly what devices will also connect to WiFi 7 as the protocol was only launched in 2024 and very few devices on the market support it yet.

Overall, EE win against Virgin Media in the router category, they provide all customers with a WiFi 6 enabled device, and those at the cutting-edge of technology can even access a WiFi 7 device, although most households won't benefit from it yet.

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Call plans

Winner: Inclusive call plans are cheaper with Virgin Media than with EE, and Virgin's Volt bundles also offer very good value for money for those who want to keep a home phone.

Virgin Media broadband and phone starts at just £29.99 per month, compared to £34.99 for an equivalent plan with EE.

Virgin Media customers can also access the M250 Volt Fibre Broadband + Weekend chatter plan for just £31.99 per month, which includes faster broadband, Volt benefits and free calls to UK landlines at the weekend.

So, while taking a home phone line with EE is perhaps more straightforward as it costs £5 per month on any plan, Virgin Media's pre-made bundles usually work out better value.

Adding an inclusive call plan is also cheaper with Virgin Media, with their UK anytime call plan costing £10 per month, while this option costs £18 per month with EE.

Virgin Media's basic home phone service includes calls to UK landlines at the weekend, while EE customers will only get pay as you go calls at all times with the simple line rental option.

Overall, Virgin Media are cheaper than EE when bundling a home phone service, with or without inclusive calls.

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TV

Winner: Virgin Media offer a cheaper and more comprehensive pay TV service with various options compared to EE TV.

Virgin Media and EE broadband customers can choose to bundle a pay TV service with their broadband for access to discounted premium TV content from Sky and other channels.

EE TV is built around NOW TV Memberships, like NOW Entertainment, NOW Cinema, and NOW Sport, which also closely mirror Sky content like Sky Cinema and Sky Sports packs, and include access to Sky's exclusive Sky Atlantic channel.

Virgin Media customers can choose from either their traditional TV 360 pay TV service, or the newer Flex streaming box set, which offers much more flexible on-demand access to Sky and other apps.

Here's how they look side-by-side:

Virgin Media Flex comes with little premium content without paying extra on top of the above prices, with the Essential Entertainment add-on costing £15 per month for example.

The Bigger Bundle and the EE Entertainment TV plan come with a similar array of entertainment channels, like Sky Entertainment, Discovery and National Geographic.

In our guides to the cheapest ways to watch Sky Sports, TNT Sports, and Sky Cinema, Virgin Media usually works out quite a bit cheaper than EE or BT TV, which are priced the same.

EE TV customers can change their pack on a monthly basis, but for those who want this level of flexibility Virgin Media's Flex plan is comparable.

Overall, Virgin Media beat EE for pay TV, their bundle prices are a lot cheaper, including when accessing premium content like Sky Sports and TNT Sports. Although, EE have access to Sky Atlantic, which isn't available on Virgin Media.

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Customer service

Winner: EE have less complaints than Virgin Media, although recent quarters have seen complaints rise for EE.

Up until late 2023, EE consistently had the second fewest complaints of all major broadband providers, surpassed only by Sky.

In Q1 2024, EE complaints rose from 9 in the previous quarter, to 14 complaints per 100,000 customers, higher than the industry average of 14 for the period. This trend has continued into the most recent Q2 2024 report, with EE receiving 14 complaints per 100,000 customers again, with the industry average sitting at 10.

However, in comparison, despite the recent increase in complaints against EE to the regulator, Virgin Media have been higher for a while now and often sitting amongst the most complained about providers.

In Q3 2023, as a result of Ofcom's investigation into complaints about Virgin Media's contract cancellations in July 2023, Virgin Media's complaints hit a peak of 32, although they have improved somewhat since.

Looking at Ofcom's research into customer satisfaction from May 2023, we can also see how customers of EE broadband tend to have higher levels of satisfaction than customers of Virgin Media.

One area we do know Virgin Media perform well in however, is fault fixing, with one of the fastest fault resolution times in the market.

On average, Virgin Media take just one day to repair a total loss of service, with only 3% of customers contacting the provider about a fault having to make contact a second time.

In comparison, EE took on average four days to repair a total loss of service, and had as many as 16% of customers having to contact the provider again about the same fault.

Overall, EE have a better score record than Virgin Media does for customer service, but Virgin Media do perform well for reliability.

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Verdict: EE or Virgin Media for broadband?

Overall winner: Virgin Media offer cheaper prices for new customers than EE does, and customers can also access a similar level of extras, including a more comprehensive TV plan.

Virgin Media offer cheap broadband-only plans, but with their TV bundles and Volt, customers can also access value for money premium TV and mobile services too.

Availability for gigabit broadband is greater with Virgin Media than EE, with over 17.8 million premises passed, compared to 16 million on the Openreach network.

While Virgin Media beat EE on price, some customers may be swayed by EE's better performance on customer service metrics, although recent reports show complaints increasing for the provider.

Virgin Media are the better choice for:

• Cheaper prices on broadband-only and broadband and phone plans
• More comprehensive TV service with choices between TV 360 and Flex
• Value for money bundles with Volt including home phone, mobile SIM, double mobile data and WiFi boosters

While, EE may be better for:

• Customers who want a WiFi 6 enabled router
• Wider availability for multi-gigabit download speeds
• Premium upgrade options including a 4G mobile back-up device and the latest WiFi 7 router

Overall, Virgin Media offer cheaper and better value broadband deals than EE does, although some customers may prefer EE's links to BT, but bear in mind, that the premium brand comes at a cost.