Ofcom Reveals True UK Broadband Speeds

Author	Gordon Kelly
Published	28th Jul 2009

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This should be nice and controversial.

Ofcom has followed up its UK 3G coverage assessment with its own real world test of the country's broadband speeds. Determined to see just how much we are being short changed by supposedly faster 8-10Mbit packages the industry body trialled the nine largest ISPs.

To make its figures beyond reproach over 60 million separate performance tests were carried out in more than 1600 UK homes between November 2008 and April 2009. The results were staggering with Ofcom making the following conclusions:

The average broadband speed in the UK in April 2009 was 4.1 megabits per second (Mbit/s). This compares to an average 'up to' headline speed of 7.1 Mbit/s.
The actual speeds received varied widely. Fewer than one in ten (9 per cent) of our sample on 8Mbit/s headline packages received actual average speeds of over 6Mbit/s and around one in five (19 per cent) received, on average, less than 2Mbit/s.
Those living in urban areas received significantly faster speeds than those living in rural areas. The average speed delivered to urban consumers was 4.6Mbit/s, compared to an average of 3.3Mbit/s delivered to rural consumers.
Consumers with all ISPs experienced a slowdown in actual speeds during peak evening hours (8-10pm), with speeds in this period around 20 per cent slower than over a 24-hour period.

The breakdown per ISP (including margin of error) was as follows:

ISP and package - average speed
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
TalkTalk ('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

Ultimately it's a pretty sorry sight with the notable exception far and away being Virgin Media with its minimum speed roughly double that of any of its rivals. If this doesn't show the benefits of cable over DSL at this moment in time then nothing will.

Funnily enough, despite these huge discrepancies, Ofcom found "the majority of consumers were happy with the speeds they received" with just 26 per cent admitting "the speed they received was not what they expected when they signed up to the service." all in all however, it's not really good enough, is it?

Link:
Ofcom Report

Latest 4 of 29 Comments

Have your say: Leave a comment below about this article.

MrGodfrey said on 29th July 2009

Chocoa: I would love to PAY for a decent service. The problem is that I have tried, and0 I simply cannot get a better service in my (urban, reasonably well-off) area, no matter how... more

Xiphias said on 29th July 2009

@MrGodfrey: Well you should be able to get a service with a reasonably constant speed and no throttling unless you're in an area where ADSL isn't availible. If you'r... more

farki80 said on 29th July 2009

Virgin may have good speeds there, until you find yourself being throttled for a couple of hours a day because they don't actually serve 'unlimited' bandwidth.

Judderman said on 30th July 2009

I am also on Virgin 10mbit Unlimited, after ringing customer services reference the traffic management I was told "You get 4gb a day and after that your speed is cut to 2mbit ... more

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