Ofcom Broadband Speed Test Results Revealed

Ofcom, the UK’s communications regulator (www.Ofcom.org.uk) has published its latest home broadband speed test results which show that UK consumers are receiving 22% faster broadband speeds than a year ago.
Conducted in November 2011 in over 1,700 homes, the UK’s average home broadband speed was found to be 7.6 mega bytes per second (Mbps), compared with 6.2Mbps in November 2010.
The 22% increase is largely attributed to consumers switching to higher speed fibre optic packages, though 40% of broadband consumers still remain on a 10Mbps or less broadband speed package – despite being likely to get a faster speed for no extra cost if they switched supplier or package.
Virgin Media’s 50Mbps fibre optic broadband package maintained its top position in the broadband speed charts with actual speeds of 49Mbps, while BT’s 40Mbps fibre optic Infinity package delivered 36Mbps download speeds and table toppping 8.8Mbps upload speeds.

Commenting on the speed test results, Ofcom’s Chief Executive, Ed Richards, said: “We can look forward to further increases in UK broadband speeds over the next few years. Most households in the UK can now access superfast broadband services, and these services are set to get faster still as Virgin Media aims to double the speeds of most of its cable services and BT aims to double the speed of its fibre-to-the-cabinet service from 40Mbps to 80Mbps”.
Interested readers can find out whether they can receive faster fibre optic broadband speeds from the likes of Virgin Media and BT by entering their postcode on our broadband availability checker.