Average broadband speed in UK is 4.1Mb

Ofcom has revealed it’s findings on broadband speeds that we are receiving in the UK and has found that the average speed we receive is 4.1Mb.

They recorded over 60 million readings from broadband speed tests that were performed in 1,600 homes from November 2008 to April 2009 and allowed Ofcom to compare the results of the 9 largest UK broadband providers.

The results from April 2009 showed that the average broadband speed in the UK was 4.1Mb which was lower than the average advertised “up to” speed which was at 7.1Mb.

Of those who were on an “up to” 8Mb service only 9% of them received a broadband speed over 6Mb and 19% received below 2Mb.
As is no surprise those broadband users living in urban areas received faster broadband speeds than those living in rural areas with those in urban areas receiving on average 4.6Mb and those in rural areas 3.3Mb

The results for the broadband providers tested were as follows:

AOL (‘up to’ 8Mbit/s)                        3.3 to 3.9Mbit/s
BT (‘up to’ 8Mbit/s)                           3.8 to 4.2Mbit/s
O2 (‘up to’ 8Mbit/s)*                        4.1 to 5.1Mbit/s
Orange (‘up to’ 8Mbit/s)                   3.8 to 4.5Mbit/s
Plusnet (‘up to’ 8Mbit/s)*                 3.8 to 4.9Mbit/s
Sky (‘up to’ 8Mbit/s)                         4.0 to 4.7Mbit/s
Talk Talk (‘up to’ 8Mbit/s)                 3.8 to 4.6Mbit/s
Tiscali (‘up to’ 8Mbit/s)                     3.2 to 3.7Mbit/s
Virgin Media (‘up to’ 10Mbit/s)          8.1 to 8.7Mbit/s

*Data for O2 and Plusnet should be treated with caution as sampled sizes were smaller than for other ISPs