Onestream broadband review 2024: Is it any good?

Dan Howdle • July 31st, 2024

Onestream broadband launched in the summer of 2018, and it’s part of the Hampshire-based broadband specialist Onecom. Like most UK broadband providers, it uses the Openreach network.

Onestream is one of a number of companies hoping to lure customers away from the big providers, such as BT, Sky, Virgin Media and TalkTalk. But is Onestream broadband any good?

Key features

Here’s a quick look at what you can expect to find in a Onestream broadband deal.

Broadband speed

Onestream offers seven broadband speeds, spread across two different technologies (fibre and Full Fibre), and additionally offers ADSL (slow, non-fibre) broadband only to those who can't get anything else. The slowest package, called Onestream Fibre 40, offers an average download speed of 38Mbps. This is the same speed tier as you'll find at the entry level from just about any other national provider. The next speed up is advertised as Onestream Fibre 80, which comes with an average download speed of 70Mbps.

In terms of Full Fibre, Onestream offers a very similar line-up to other national providers. Its Full Fibre packages – available to around one in three households asd things stand – come in speed tiers of 70Mbps, 101Mbps, 194Mbps, 484Mbps, and 871Mbps, though the naming of these packages rounds things up or down to the nearest 10 or 100Mbps. So, Supreme Full Fibre 80, 100, 200, 500 and Hyperstream Full Fibre 900. It is, in our opinion, a smidge more confusing than it needs to be, though it's an improvement on when we last checked in with Onestream, when it was offering bizarre speed tiers no one else does such as 20Mbps and 40Mbps.

When it comes to upload speeds, Onestream Fibre 40 comes with an average 9Mbps upload speed, Onestream Fibre 80 comes with 18Mbps. Full Fibre 80 and Full Fibre 115 also offer 18Mbps upload, while Full Fibre 200, 500 and 900 offer 26Mbps, 66Mbps and 101Mbps respectively. Generally speaking, upload speeds are of lesser importance to most people than download speed, but if you frequently use video calling, play multiplayer games online, engage in live streaming video or need to upload documents regularly, a good upload speed is useful.

Onestream offers its broadband packages only on 24-month contract terms. This is a big change from when we last reviewed Onestream last year. The provider used to offer a range of contract lengths, but it seems it has seen the way the wind is blowing with the likes of other providers like BT and now wants to tie all customers in for at least two years. At the time of writing, all Onestream deals are offering the first year half-price, which more than makes up for the long contracts. It's a fabulous deal and one we hope lasts.

If you’re wondering which speed to choose, take a look at our guide to choosing a broadband speed which comes with some useful suggestions to help you find the right speed for your home.

Installation and router

Onestream uses the same network as BT, Sky, TalkTalk and pretty much every other national provider in the UK except for Virgin Media. Because of this, if you sign up with Onestream you won’t have to inform your old provider that you’re switching broadband – Onestream will do this for you. Unless you’re currently with Virgin Media, in which case you will have to do it yourself.

Onestream doesn’t specify how long it will take to get your broadband up and running, but you can generally expect a new provider to have activated your service within a couple of weeks.

You’ll get step-by-step instructions to get things set up at home although you do have the option of getting an engineer to come out to do it for you – as long as you’re willing to pay extra.

Router

This is a sticky area for Onestream. Unlike just about every other provider in existence, Onestream has you rent the router from them for an additional monthly charge not mentioned in any of their headline pricing. What a terrible idea this is. Three routers are available depending on which package you select, and Onestream actually encourages users to use their own router to save money. Hmm.

Reliability

Specific figures for Onestream are hard to come by as it is such a new provider, and it isn’t included in Ofcom’s research because its market share is too small. But there are figures available for Openreach, which is in charge of the network on which Onestream runs.

Openreach says it fixed an impressive 97.1% of faults within five working days in the third quarter of 2020/21. This compares to 95.6% within four days in 2018.

Onestream does not use traffic management on any of its packages, so you shouldn’t notice any sudden slowdown in your connection, and it also claims to be totally unlimited so you can stream and download to your heart’s content.

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Customer service

You can call Onestream’s UK-based customer service team on 0300 303 2184 or send an email to hello@onestream.co.uk if you have any problems. The provider also offers a live chat function during office hours. Onestream’s parent company Onecom has a good reputation in the business broadband market, but reports of customer service for Onestream consumer broadband are mixed. As of June 2022, Onestream had a 3.9/5 rating on Trustpilot, with 65% of 6,115 reviews rating them as ‘Excellent’ and 22% rating them as ‘Bad’.

This is not actually a great score for an independent broadband provider. The fact more than one in five customers were so upset with the quality of service provided by Onestream they took to Trustpilot to publicly decry the provider is astonishing when you really think about it. Most independent providers are sporting scored of 4.5-4.8.

Conclusion: Okay

Onestream is still something of an unknown quantity because it’s relatively new, but its parent company Onecom is well-respected as a business broadband provider so that’s something to take comfort in.

Onestream offers some of the cheapest fibre and Full Fibre broadband deals going, making it appear good value for money. However, when you layer on the broadband rental fees and the poor quality of service experienced by so many of its customers, is it really worth trying to save a few quid a month versus the risk of turmoil? We think not.

To see what packages are available from other providers, head this way to check out the latest fibre broadband deals.

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