UK Market Report 2026
How Long Britain Waits on Hold: UK Call Waiting Times by Sector 2026
We brought together the published call waiting times for energy, broadband, mobile and the NHS 111 service, and ranked every company on one scale. It is the first time these sectors have been compared side by side. The gap is enormous. The fastest company answers in seven seconds. The slowest keeps you waiting more than seven minutes. Where you wait longest has far more to do with the company you call than the industry it sits in.
7:16
Longest wait of any company, Utility Warehouse
0:07
Fastest wait of any company, 100Green
Which sector keeps you waiting longest
Ranked by the average time to reach a human adviser, energy is the slowest of the four sectors and NHS 111 is among the fastest. But the headline figure hides the real finding. The gap between sectors is small. The gap inside each sector is huge.
An energy customer might wait seven seconds or seven minutes depending entirely on which supplier they are with. That is the pattern across every sector in this study. Your wait is decided by the company you call, not the industry it belongs to.
The full ranking, company by company
All 33 companies that publish a call waiting time, ranked slowest to fastest. Tap a column heading to sort, or a sector button to filter.
How each sector compares
NHS 111 publishes its average speed to answer every month, which makes it one of the most transparent phone services in the country. On the latest published figures it answers in around a minute, placing it among the faster services in this study.
Energy has the widest spread of any sector. Utility Warehouse sits at more than seven minutes, the longest wait of any company here, while 100Green answers in seven seconds, the fastest. Most of the large, well known suppliers land between one and three minutes, with the median supplier answering in just over a minute.
Broadband ranges from KCOM at over seven minutes to Vodafone at twenty five seconds. The familiar national providers, BT, Virgin Media, Sky and TalkTalk, mostly fall between one and three and a half minutes, so even among the big names the wait varies by several minutes.
Mobile is the most consistent sector. Most networks answer inside two minutes, and several budget networks, including Tesco Mobile and Lebara, answer in under half a minute. O2 is the outlier at the slow end.
The service where the number does not exist
There is one regulated essential service in Britain where the call waiting number simply does not exist. No UK water company publishes how long it keeps customers on hold.
The water regulator publishes complaints data and customer satisfaction scores, but not a single comparable call waiting time. Water is the one essential service in this study where you cannot find out, before you dial, how long you are likely to wait. It is the clearest gap in the data, and it is worth naming.
Are waiting times getting better or worse
| # ↕ | Company ↕ | Sector ↕ | Wait to reach a human ↕ |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Utility Warehouse | Energy | 7:16 |
| 2 | KCOM | Broadband | 7:09 |
| 3 | BT | Broadband | 3:33 |
| 4 | O2 | Mobile | 3:27 |
| 5 | Lyca Mobile | Mobile | 2:56 |
| 6 | EE | Broadband | 2:53 |
| 7 | EDF Energy | Energy | 2:46 |
| 8 | Virgin Media | Broadband | 2:17 |
| 9 | E.ON Next | Energy | 2:03 |
| 10 | EE | Mobile | 2:03 |
| 11 | Good Energy | Energy | 2:02 |
| 12 | Ovo Energy | Energy | 1:33 |
| 13 | iD Mobile | Mobile | 1:33 |
| 14 | Outfox Energy | Energy | 1:17 |
| 15 | Octopus Energy | Energy | 1:17 |
| 16 | ScottishPower | Energy | 1:16 |
| 17 | Co-Operative Energy | Energy | 1:14 |
| 18 | Sky Mobile | Mobile | 1:12 |
| 19 | TalkTalk | Broadband | 1:08 |
| 20 | So Energy | Energy | 1:06 |
| 21 | Utilita | Energy | 1:00 |
| 22 | E (Gas and Electricity) | Energy | 1:00 |
| 23 | British Gas | Energy | 0:51 |
| 24 | Plusnet | Broadband | 0:50 |
| 25 | Three | Mobile | 0:46 |
| 26 | NOW Broadband | Broadband | 0:46 |
| 27 | Sky | Broadband | 0:46 |
| 28 | Ecotricity | Energy | 0:45 |
| 29 | Vodafone | Mobile | 0:29 |
| 30 | Vodafone | Broadband | 0:25 |
| 31 | Tesco Mobile | Mobile | 0:20 |
| 32 | Lebara | Mobile | 0:15 |
| 33 | 100Green | Energy | 0:07 |
The direction of travel matters as much as the snapshot. This is not a story of decline. Across most of the published data, waiting times are holding steady or improving year on year, not getting worse.
The real issue is not that everyone is getting slower. It is how wide the gap still is between the best and worst performers in the same industry, with customers calling about exactly the same kind of problem. A seven second answer and a seven minute wait exist in the same sector, in the same year.
How we built this
This study brings together call waiting times that are each published separately and have never been compared on one scale before. The ranking is our own work.
Sources. NHS 111 figures from NHS England Integrated Urgent Care data. Energy figures from Citizens Advice Historic Star Rating Data. Broadband and mobile figures from Ofcom, Comparing customer service.
An honest note on comparability. Each body measures waiting slightly differently and publishes for a slightly different period. Each figure here is the latest each organisation has published, so the periods are not identical. We rank them together because the measures are close, but they are not perfectly like for like, and we would rather say so than pretend otherwise.
Ranking and all analysis by The VoIP Shop. Free to use with credit to thevoipshop.co.uk
What this means for your business
Every wait in this study is a customer deciding whether to hold on or hang up. An AI receptionist answers every call on the first ring, so no caller sits in a queue and no enquiry is lost while the phone rings out. It is the simplest way to make sure your own hold time is never the reason a customer goes elsewhere.
Frequently asked questions
Which UK sector has the longest call waiting times?
How long does NHS 111 take to answer?
How long do energy suppliers take to answer the phone?
How long do broadband and mobile providers take to answer?
Why do different sectors measure waiting time differently?
Do UK water companies publish call waiting times?
Where does this call waiting time data come from?
How can a business reduce its own call waiting time?
Written By | About the Author
kullbant singh hothi has over 15 years of experience in the VoIP and telecoms industry. Drawing on a background in telecoms sales and leadership, he provides expert, impartial advice on VoIP and cloud telephony solutions. As a lead author for The VoIP Shop,
kullbant singh hothi
helps businesses understand and adopt modern communication technologies.
Sources
- NHS England, Integrated Urgent Care Aggregate Data Collection (NHS 111), published monthly.
- Citizens Advice, Historic Star Rating Data, energy supplier call wait times.
- Ofcom, Comparing customer service: mobile, home broadband and landline.
- Ranking and analysis by The VoIP Shop. Each figure is the latest published by that body, so periods differ slightly and are described in the method section. Free to use with credit to thevoipshop.co.uk
