The speed of fixed line broadband has seen an increase of over 25 per cent in the last year in broadband speed test done by Ofcom.

After Ofcom conducted it’s own broadband speed test research in partnership with the broadband site SamKnows the results showed that broadband speeds on average were raised from 4.1Mb to 5.2Mb.

This speed increase comes as broadband providers continue to try and offer customers faster and faster broadband speeds, a statistic which is proved with the fact that in April 2009 just 8% of broadband users fixed line connections were  advertised as above “up to” 10Mb, with that figure now raised to 24% on services offering above “up to” this speed.

With these increasing advertised headline speeds comes the fact that although on average broadband speeds have increased there is a growing gap between what users are advertised as their “up to” speed and what they are actually receiving.
In April 2009 the average advertised “up to” speed was 7.1Mb with the actual average broadband speed customers received being 4.1Mb which meant that users were receiving 58% of the advertised speed.

However, in May 2010 the average advertised broadband “up to” speed was 11.5Mb and the actual broadband speed customers received ion average was 5.2Mb which is just 45% of the advertised speed.

Unsurprisingly was the fact that Virgin Medias fibre broadband provided the fastest broadband, with the 10Mb and 20Mb which provided download speed around twice as fast as broadband packages offering similar headline speeds.
The fastest broadband speed was found to be on Virgin Medias 50Mb fibre broadband service which offered an average broadband download speed of 36Mb when done on a single thread test (when just 1 file is downloaded) and about 46Mb when a multi-thread test (when three files are downloaded at the same time which is more in line with how heavy broadband users use the Internet) was performed.