Broadband compensation: what your provider owes you

Broadband compensation is what your provider owes you when the line goes down and stays down, when the engineer does not turn up, or when a new service never starts on the day you were promised. On some networks the money lands on your bill without you asking. On others it does not exist at all, and nobody mentions which sort you are buying at the point you sign. That is unusual. Most consumer protection in this market applies to everyone selling you a connection, and this one only applies to the companies that volunteered for it.

What is broadband compensation?

It is a fixed payment, set per day or per missed appointment, that a provider makes when one of three things goes wrong. Ofcom publishes the amounts and updates them every April. The providers that have signed up apply them without being asked, normally as a credit on your next bill.

The word automatic is doing all the work in that sentence. You do not fill in a form, you do not have to argue your case, and you do not have to show what the outage cost you. That is what separates it from a goodwill payment, which you get only if you complain and only if the person on the phone decides you have complained well enough.

How much is it worth?

Ofcom's rates from 1 April 2026, according to its guidance on the scheme:

• £10.34 for each calendar day your service is not repaired after a total loss, once the qualifying period has passed.
• £32.31 for a missed appointment, meaning an engineer who does not arrive or an appointment cancelled with less than 24 hours' notice.
• £6.46 for each calendar day a new service is late starting, counted from the date you were told it would go live.

The qualifying period is the part people miss. On a fault, the clock does not start the moment your internet drops. Your provider gets two full working days to put it right, and the daily payment covers what happens after that. So a fault fixed the same afternoon earns you nothing, which is fair enough, while one that drags on for a fortnight adds up to more than most people expect.

Which providers actually pay it?

Ten of them: BT, EE, Hyperoptic, Plusnet, Sky including NOW Broadband, TalkTalk, Utility Warehouse, Virgin Media, Vodafone and Zen Internet. That list is the entire scheme. It is a voluntary code of practice rather than a regulation, so a provider that has never signed it is not breaking any rule by paying you nothing when your line fails.

Here is the honest trade-off for anyone weighing up a smaller network. Most alternative networks are not on that list. Two of them are, so this is a choice each company makes rather than something only the giants can afford. If the network on your street is not one of the ten, the automatic half of all this does not apply to you.

Keep it in proportion, though. What you lose is the automatic part, not the right to be compensated. It belongs with the other questions worth asking about switching to a small provider rather than outweighing them, and a network that answers the phone and fixes the fault on Tuesday has cost you nothing at all.

What if your provider is not on the list?

You complain to the provider, and if that goes nowhere you take it to an ombudsman, which every provider must belong to by law. That backstop is not voluntary, and it is the thing the automatic scheme is built on top of rather than a lesser alternative to it.

There are two approved schemes, the Communications Ombudsman and CISAS, and your provider has to tell you which one it belongs to. Ofcom explains how to use them. Going to one costs you nothing, and the decision binds the provider without binding you: if you do not accept the outcome, your other options are still open.

The waiting time got shorter this year. Under rules that apply to complaints raised on or after 8 April 2026, you can escalate six weeks after complaining rather than eight. You can go sooner than that if your provider issues a deadlock letter, which is its way of saying it has done all it intends to do.

What the scheme does not cover

Three triggers, and that is the lot: a total loss of service repaired too slowly, a missed appointment, and a delayed start. Everything else about a bad month with your provider falls outside it.

The most common disappointment is speed. A connection that works but runs well below what you were sold is a real problem with a real route to fixing it, and that route is not this one. What broadband speed do I need? covers what your provider actually guarantees, which is the number that matters when you want to argue about it.

How to make sure you actually get it

Four things, none of which takes long.

• Report the fault properly and keep the reference. The compensation clock runs from when the provider knows, not from when you noticed, so a fault you sat on for two days is two days you will not be paid for.
• Write down the dates. When the service went, when it came back, when the engineer was due. If a credit later comes up short, those three dates are your whole case.
• Check the next two bills. The credit should appear on one of them. If it does not and your provider is on the list above, that is a complaint with an obvious answer.
• Ask before you sign, not after. Whether a provider is in the scheme is a fair question to put to it directly, and the answer tells you something about the company beyond the money.

None of this should decide your choice on its own. Coverage decides most of it, because the fastest and cheapest network in the country is no use if it has not built down your road. Run your postcode through the availability checker to see who actually reaches you, then ask each of them what happens on the day it breaks. The answers will not all be the same.

Frequently asked questions

Do I have to claim broadband compensation?

Not if your provider is one of the ten signed up to the scheme. The payment is meant to arrive on its own, without a phone call and without you proving what the outage cost you. If your provider has not signed up, nothing arrives on its own and you are into an ordinary complaint instead.

How is the money paid?

Normally as a credit on your bill rather than as cash, and usually on the next bill or the one after it. Your provider sets out its own timing in the terms, so that is the thing to read if a credit you were expecting has not turned up.

Does it cover a slow connection?

No. The scheme is built around three specific failures: a total loss of service that is not repaired in time, a missed engineer appointment, and a new service that does not start on the promised date. A connection that works but runs slower than you were sold is a separate problem with a separate route.

What if my provider is not in the scheme?

You still have somewhere to go. Every provider must belong to an approved ombudsman scheme by law, so a complaint that gets nowhere can be escalated to an independent body free of charge. It is slower than an automatic credit, and it is not nothing.

Can I claim for the money an outage actually cost me?

That is outside what the scheme does. It pays a flat rate per day or per appointment, which is deliberately simple and will not always match your real loss. If your loss is much larger than the fixed amount, that is a conversation with your provider and then with the ombudsman, not something the automatic payment covers.