EE Broadband Review

While EE has long been known as a powerhouse of the mobile phone industry, in recent years they have been making waves in the home broadband market, too.

EE is part of the BT Group, along with another broadband provider, Plusnet. Like Plusnet, EE continues to operate as an individual business, but benefits from shared infrastructure and resources across the BT Group.

While EE are getting their home broadband services into an increasing number of homes, to many people they’re still just a mobile phone network. However, they’re one of a growing number of providers to be moving into the ultrafast broadband sector, as we’ll see shortly.

Our EE broadband review will look at how EE’s packages perform in terms of speed and price, and what these look like in comparison to their competitors. We’ll also look at EE’s customer service reputation, all to help you decide whether EE is the broadband provider for you.

Let’s get started.

What Broadband Speeds Does EE Offer?

EE offers five broadband packages, for which we have highlighted their names and speeds in the table below.

If you’re an EE mobile customer, you will also get 5MB of data added to your monthly mobile data allowance if you take out the standard, fibre, or fibre plus broadband packages. If you take out either of the fibre max packages, you will get 20MB of data added to your mobile data allowance.

EE Broadband Download Speeds

Due to a ruling from the Advertising Standards Authority that came into effect in May 2018, internet service providers (ISP’s) in the United Kingdom are now required to advertise average speeds on the basis of what at least half of their customers can receive at peak times. Prior to this ruling, ISP’s could advertise higher headline speeds, so long as only 10% of customers were being provided with such a speed.

Although this ruling means the advertised speeds you see when looking for your ideal broadband package are more accurate, the speed you can receive, and use, depends on several variables. Use a broadband speed checker to get an even more accurate idea of the internet speeds you can expect to receive, from EE or any other provider.

The tables below highlight the most recent data based on Ofcom’s home broadband performance research, comparing EE to other popular providers against the advertised speeds they offer. This research took place in November 2018 and was published in May 2019.

How Do EE’s Broadband Speeds Compare to Others?

Let’s look at how EE’s broadband packages compare to other ISP’s in delivering the speeds it says it will.

EE 10MB Standard Broadband Speed Comparison

Although Ofcom’s research did not include EE’s 10MB package, presumably due to a lack of Ofcom panellists being EE customers using this package, we have included the table highlighting the performance of other ISP’s at this end of the market for your reference.

EE 36MB Fibre Broadband Speed Comparison

While EE does not hit its advertised average speed for its 36MB broadband packages, neither do any of the other ISP’s offering broadband in this speed bracket. However, EE does offer the best speeds overall among these packages, slightly ahead of Sky and significantly better than BT. It’s also worth noting its performance is better than TalkTalk who actually advertise a higher average speed.

EE 67MB Fibre Plus Broadband Speed Comparison

The most notable feature about EE’s performance with its 67MB fibre broadband package is the performance range. If you’re an EE broadband customer, you could be getting the best speeds, or getting speeds comfortably slower than the best.

EE Fibre Max Broadband Speed Comparison

As EE are new to the ultrafast market, Ofcom does not currently have any published data relating to speed performance for EE’s Fibre Max 1 and 2 packages.

As we did for the 10MB packages, we have included a table below highlighting the performance of BT and Virgin Media where it has been tested for their ultrafast packages, for you to use as a reference if you take out an EE Fibre Max package.

EE Download Speeds Summary

Given the lack of data available for EE’s 10MB package and its Fibre Max packages, it’s difficult to know exactly where EE fits into the market in terms of performance.

While EE is the best performer for 36MB broadband packages, at 67MB its performance range varies significantly, which may be an indicator of similar performance at higher speeds. How useful is a broadband package that can deliver “best in class” broadband speeds if it’s only doing so some of the time, and the rest of the time is lagging behind others?

EE Upload Speeds

Like many ISP’s, EE doesn’t make a big deal about advertising its upload speeds.

While the headlines are always given to the download speeds, if you’re going to be regularly uploading files, photos, or videos to the internet, particularly in bulk, then a decent upload performance could save you a lot of time.

Let’s look at how EE performs for uploads in comparison to its competitors for its 36MB and 67MB broadband packages.

While EE again has a wider performance range than its competitors, in this case for uploads with its 36MB package, it is easily the best at this speed, even on par with BT’s 50MB broadband package and far better than what Virgin Media offers with its 54MB package.

Repeating the trend seen in the download speed test data, the move from 36MB to 67MB sees EE continue to perform well but fall back towards the rest of the pack. The performance range remains higher than others, too.

EE Broadband Speeds Summary

In terms of both download and upload speeds, EE’s 36MB Fibre Broadband package is sitting at the top of the class when it comes to comparative performance against other ISP’s. EE’s 67MB package also offers fast speeds and could potentially also be the quickest in this bracket, but its wider performance range means it could also be one of the worst at any given time.

EE Broadband Offers and Deals

EE is not currently offering any specific incentives for new customers signing up to their home broadband services. However, if you’re already an EE mobile customer, you can enjoy extra data added to your mobile allowance when you take out a broadband package.

EE’s packages and pricing are detailed in the table below.

It is worth noting that while some ISP’s guarantee their customers’ broadband price won’t change during their contract, EE explicitly states that prices will increase in line with inflation every year.

How Does EE Broadband’s Pricing Compare to Other ISP’s?

Let’s look at how EE’s broadband packages compare to others.

EE Standard Broadband 10MB Price Comparison

Although EE is not the outright cheapest, for budget broadband packages it is comparable with Plusnet, TalkTalk, and Now Broadband, although is significantly more expensive than both Sky and Now out of contract.

EE is very much a mid-range performer for price in this bracket, although there isn’t a lot between the cheapest providers when in contract.

EE is again a mid-range performer when it comes to pricing for 67MB broadband services and has one of the biggest jumps in price at the end of your contract.

EE Fibre Max Price Comparison

Due to the relatively low number of competitors in the ultrafast market and the vast range of speeds offered, we have included both of EE’s Fibre Max services in the same table below, alongside other competitors. As you will be able to see from the data, there is quite a lot of fluctuation in prices between different providers, which is to be expected given these services are all relatively new to market. It may be a few years before pricing settles down, but as these become more popular it is likely that pricing will become more competitive between ISP’s.

Offering free set up and the cheapest monthly cost for a 145MB subscription, EE is easily the best deal in terms of price in this bracket.EE is competitive at 300MB, too, although for the same price with Virgin Media you can get a 20% faster connection

EE Broadband Pricing Summary

EE’s pricing is very much mid-market, until it comes into its own when we start to look at ultrafast broadband speeds.

Whether EE’s pricing works will ultimately come down to whether its ultrafast broadband delivers the speeds it says it does. If it does, then EE will be very competitive at the prices it offers.

EE Customer Service

Based on Ofcom’s research, EE’s customer service performance is very good.

As we can see from the chart below, EE scored highest, just ahead of Plusnet, for overall customer satisfaction, and was a close second to Sky for customers with a reason to complain and satisfaction with complaints handling.

EE provides a range of support options for its customers:

• The Contact Us portal on the EE website is designed to help you either find an answer to your query, or direct you to a Live Chat or a phone call with someone who can help.
• The EE Community Portal is another useful source of information for those who don’t mind asking for help in this way and may be a means of getting an answer quickly if previous customers have had the same issue.
• @EE on Twitter, which acts as a “catch all” customer service gateway for all EE customers and is not just for EE broadband.

Summing Up Our EE Broadband Review

Other than its standout customer service, and a good speed comparison for its 36GB broadband package, it’s difficult to see EE as anything more than a middle of the road performer when it comes to home broadband.

Don’t get us wrong, you can do a lot worse than choosing an ISP that represents a safe pair of hands, and if you happen to be an EE mobile customer you also get the benefit of extra free data.

Where EE could come into their own and really step out of the shadows as a broadband provider is if their ultrafast packages deliver, as at the prices they are currently offering them at they have the potential to be excellent value, and the 20GB extra data is a welcome bonus, too!