Only four of the UK’s 11 biggest internet service providers (ISP) have scored more than 50 per cent for customer satisfaction in a survey conducted by Think Broadband.

Of the 500,000 people polled by the broadband comparison website, 79 per cent voted O2 as the best for customer service. A further 72 per cent said it was the best for reliability.

Be Unlimited came second with 71 per cent and 70 per cent respectively and Plusnet followed with 67 and 69 per cent.

Sky came fourth, with half of those surveyed saying they were pleased with its customer service and 56 per cent claiming they were happy with reliability.

However, Orange was bottom of the pile, with a customer satisfaction score of only 33 per cent and Tiscali, Pipex, AOL and Talktalk all failed to score above 40 per cent.

Sebastien Lahtinen, co-founder of Think Broadband, said: "The satisfaction levels achieved by O2 and Be Unlimited are exceptional for a company of their size.

"Often consumers only consider price and the infamous 'up to' speeds in selecting which broadband service to subscribe to. It is refreshing to see a supplier of some of the fastest services in the country maintaining customer service and reliability levels so high."

He said one possible reason for O2 coming up trumps was because it used a UK-based call centre. He said the most common complaint was that staff in many other support centres were unable to digress from their 'script', and that they also didn’t understand the technology.

Small and medium-sized ISPs, however, scored far higher customer service rankings than their larger counterparts, with average customer service scores of more than 60 per cent, compared to 44 per cent for the major ISPs.