Plusnet tops the landline complaints table with 10 per 100,000 — a record worth reading before the landline market shrinks

6 November 2026. Ofcom's quarterly complaints data for April to June 2026, published on 26 October, has a clear landline story: BT-owned Plusnet generated the most landline complaints of any provider, at 10 per 100,000 customers — up from 7 the quarter before and more than three times the industry average of 3. Most of those complaints were about how Plusnet handled complaints in the first place. On broadband, the most-complained-about group was BT, EE, TalkTalk and Vodafone, each at 7 per 100,000, while complaints overall fell slightly, driven by a drop in pay-TV.

The numbers behind the landline table

Plusnet's 10 complaints per 100,000 customers is more than double the rate recorded at its parent BT, with TalkTalk next on 6 and EE on 4 — all above the industry average of 3. At the clean end of the table, Sky, Utility Warehouse, Virgin Media and Vodafone generated the fewest landline complaints. The pattern of the quarter, though, is not the ranking — it is the driver: Ofcom's summary points to complaints-handling as the main landline gripe, which is the kind of problem that shows up long after the fault itself is fixed.

A league table for a shrinking market

Landline complaints data is compiled against a market with a countdown attached. The PSTN closes on 31 January 2027 — 86 days from today — and around 300,000 business premises were still on legacy copper in Openreach's latest count. Every quarter from here, the "landline provider" league table covers fewer customers and a shrinking base of analogue lines. For the businesses still in it, the table is a last chance to check whether the provider holding their number is one customers complain about — before the choice stops being a choice at all.

Own the number, not the provider's reputation

The practical read for a small business: judge a provider on the things complaints tables measure — faults, provisioning, how disputes get handled — and hold the asset that survives any of them. A UK virtual number ports across to a provider you choose, keeps routing to mobiles and a SIP softphone regardless of who carries the underlying line, and starts from free pay-as-you-go, with Pay Monthly at £9.97 a month including a bundle of minutes and up to 10 forwarding destinations. The migration sequence and remaining dates are in our PSTN switch-off guide, and the last landline tables are worth a look while they still exist.

Related: One million lines to go and the 6 November LOA deadline · Ofcom complaints Q2 2026: the full picture · The PSTN switch-off guide