Lightning Fibre Wins Customer Champion Award at Connected Britain 2026
Lightning Fibre has won the Customer Champion Award at the Connected Britain Awards 2026, held at ExCeL London on Wednesday 9 September.
The award recognises the approach we take to customer service and support, and was presented during the annual event, which brings together organisations from across the UK’s connectivity sector.
Recognising customer-focused broadband
Connected Britain is a major business event for the UK’s digital economy, attracting around 8,000 attendees from across the telecoms, technology, public sector and connectivity industries.
The event featured more than 350 brands, alongside conference sessions covering topics including telecoms, infrastructure, smart cities and digital inclusion.
For Lightning Fibre, the Customer Champion Award provides recognition for the teams working directly with customers every day, from our Eastbourne-based customer service team through to our engineers and operational teams.
The judges described the winning entry as combining proactive network management with outstanding local support, demonstrating a true customer-first philosophy backed by exceptional satisfaction and retention scores.
This is the second year in a row that Lightning Fibre has received recognition at the Connected Britain Awards. In 2025, we were named Broadband Provider of the Year, making this year's Customer Champion Award the latest recognition for our work across the region.
“Winning the Customer Champion Award at a national level is a huge achievement for everyone at Lightning Fibre. It recognises the hard work our teams put in every day to give our customers the best experience we can, with real local people here in Eastbourne on hand to help. Our 5 Star ‘Excellent’ Trustpilot rating shows how much our customers value that approach.
We’d like to thank our staff, customers, partners and industry peers for the continued hard work and support.”
Bertrand Mazieres, CEO, Lightning Fibre
Connected Britain Awards 2026 winners
The full list of winners from this year’s awards is:
- AI Innovation Award: SkillsBase Forge
- Access Innovation Award: Emtelle – Rapid Customer Connect
- Barrier Removal Award: West Sussex County Council – OpenAccess West Sussex
- Broadband Provider Award: Connect Fibre
- Community Improvement Award: Littlegarth MicroBotics
- Customer Champion Award: Lightning Fibre
- Data Centre Project of the Year: Advanced Power Technology and Schneider Electric
- Digital Skills Award: Norfolk County Council – Tech Skills for Life and Digital Skills Team
- Enterprise Solution Award: Antevia Networks – 5G Shift Private Network Solution
- Indoor Connectivity Award: Wireless Infrastructure Group
- Infrastructure Builder of the Year: Viberoptix
- Mobile Service Provider of the Year: Virgin Media O2 – O2 Satellite
- OSS/BSS Innovation of the Year: Virgin Media O2 – Challenger OSS
- Public Sector Partner Award: iOpt & ng homes
- Public Sector Trailblazer Award: Scotrail
- Rising Star Award: Cameron Moir, GoFibre
- Startup of the Year: Zim Connection
- Strategic Deal of the Year: VodafoneThree
- Sustainability Award: FRITZ! & Zen
About Lightning Fibre
Lightning Fibre provides full fibre broadband to homes and businesses across East Sussex and surrounding areas. We’re based in Eastbourne, with local customer service and engineering teams, and we keep residential prices fixed for the length of a two-year contract with no annual price rises.
Our network delivers 100% full fibre connections with speeds of up to 10Gbps and we can help customers switch from another provider. Our local customer service team is available from 8am to 8pm every day on 01323 380260.
We currently have a sale on, where our hyperfast 1Gbps and 2.5Gbps packages are just £19 per month for the first six months*.
You can check availability using the postcode checker at LightningFibre.co.uk, or email business@lightningfibre.co.uk for business enquiries.
* 24-month contract only. Offer applies to new customers for the first 6 months from installation, after which your plan will automatically revert to the standard monthly price for this package for the remaining 18 months. Excludes social tariff. T&Cs apply.
