The ISPAs Rules and General Information

• All entrants must register by 17th April 2025 here.
• The awards will be presented on 26th November in London.
• The awards are being judged according to the criteria for each category published at https://www.ispa.org.uk/ispa-awards/enter-and-award-categories/
• The registration information, assessment criteria and written entry forms for each category can be found at https://www.ispa.org.uk/ispa-awards/enter-and-award-categories/
• All entrants must have registered by 17th April 2026.
• Written entry forms must have been submitted by emailing awards@ispa.org.uk by 26th June 2025.
• All entires are strictly confidential and are not made public at any point.
• Companies entering categories that are undergoing technical testing must have submitted their technical details with thinkbroadband by 17th April 2026.
• Nominations for Internet Hero can be sent to awards@ispa.org.uk
• Companies and organisations may be shortlisted for more than one award.
• Companies cannot be shortlisted for the award they sponsor.
• Following confirmation by the judges and ISPA Council, the shortlists for each award will be published prior to the Awards ceremony. The ISPA team contacts companies that have been shortlisted.
• Once the shortlist is published by ISPA, companies that have made the shortlist can publicise this fact (but using the official ISPA and ISPA Awards logos can only be done under the licence from ISPA).
• The licences are available on request and are provided to each nominee. On nomination, nominees must decide whether they wish to pay the licence fee and use the ISPA trade marks to publicise their nomination.
• The winners are announced at the Awards ceremony in November and not before.
• Winners may publicise that they are a winner of an ISPA Award (they can use the official ISPA Awards logos only with the licence from ISPA).
• The licences will be available on request to each winner after the Awards Ceremony. At this point, winners must decide whether they wish to pay the licence fee and use the ISPA trade marks to publicise their award.
• The licence for the official ISPA Awards logos can be requested at awards@ispa.org.uk
• The assessment criteria for each category can be found on https://www.ispa.org.uk/ispa-awards/enter-and-award-categories/
• No entrants shall engage in any activity that may damage the integrity of The ISPAs scheme or ceremony. Any such actions shall be raised with ISPA Council who will take any decision on disqualification. The ISPA Council’s decision with respect to disqualification is final.

Awards Testing for ISP categories

• The awards tester conducts an analysis of the services offered by the entrants in the ISP categories.
• ISPs must register their intent to enter the awards with ISPA and register their services and other requested information with the awards tester via the online form linked to from https://www.ispa.org.uk/ispa-awards/enter-and-award-categories/.
• Companies wishing to be considered for a particular award must submit the relevant information in accordance with the instructions on https://ispa.thinkbroadband.com/.
• ISPs register their technical details with the awards tester via the online form at https://st.thinkbroadband.com/ispa
• Entrants must state required number of users registered for each award and technical details where required report to the awards tester before the testing starts, when monitoring is due to begin.
• Entrants may only enter one service in each category (service/package stated in the application/intent form i.e. speed cost etc).
• ISPA reserves the right to request further information about the service and technical specifications provided by entrants and to conduct spot checks if deemed necessary.
• Entrants are required to submit supporting information demonstrating how they meet the criteria. All supporting information is submitted via the value-added forms at ISPA Awards category pages.
• On conclusion of the testing period the awards tester’s data is used to select the shortlists. This data may face independent analysis prior to selection of the finalists in each category. The number of entrants to be included in the shortlists is determined by the ISPA Awards team. A report is produced by the awards tester for consideration by the panel of judges. The report is not made public and not available on request.
• An independent judging panel composed of knowledgeable observers of the ISP sector assess the nominees in the ISP division and chooses the winners in each category.
• Entrants do not have an access to their performance data during the monitoring process.
• If it becomes apparent that an entrant is employing what may be considered dubious tactics or attempting to tamper with the monitoring procedure they will be disqualified from the awards process. Any such activity will be raised with the ISPA Council who will take any decision on disqualification. The ISPA Council’s decision with respect to disqualification will be final.
• The designated technical and marketing contacts must be available during the monitoring and set-up phase. Failure to assist in the process may render the entrant’s registration null and void.

Best Rural ISP, Best Business ISPs & Best Consumer ISPs

Entrants for the Best Consumer ISP category must offer services of at least 100 Mbps.

Entrants for the Best Business ISP category must be able to prove, on request, that a significant proportion of the service entered is specifically focused on business users.

Entrants must register their services and other requested information for the appropriate award(s) via the registration form linked to from https://st.thinkbroadband.com/ispa

The awards testing runs for two months and is testing and monitoring broadband connections using the testing website. Specific measurements are as follows:

• Downstream throughput
• Upstream throughput
• HTTP speed
• DNS lookup time
• Ping time

Non-testing categories

These Awards are judged by the ISPA Awards judges on their written entry submissions.

Internet Hero

The Internet Hero shortlists is selected by the ISPA Council.

Contact the team for more information – Awards@ISPA.org.uk