The Top 8 UK Fastest Broadband ISPs for January 2013

The latest summary of anecdotal consumer broadband ISP speed testing data has revealed that the average download speed in the United Kingdom fell sharply from 19.374Mbps (Megabits per second) in December 2012 to 16.914Mbps during January 2013. Meanwhile the average upload speed is largely unchanged at 2.387Mbps.

According to Broadband.co.uk, which conducted the tests, cable operator Virgin Media continues to be the fastest ISP for downloads with a speed score of 33.837Mbps (down from 37.224Mbps last month). The second place holder, PlusNet, trails someway behind on a still respectable 16.771Mbps.

Elsewhere PlusNet was also named the fastest ISP for upload speeds with an extremely strong score of 4.797Mbps, which suggests that a sizeable proportion of their customers are now adopting superfast broadband (FTTC) connections. It’s worth remembering that faster speeds from the latest “superfast” technologies can have a disproportionate effect compared with the older and significantly slower ADSL solutions.

Top 8 UK ISPs – Download Speed (Megabits/sec)
1. Virgin Media – 33.837Mbps
2. PlusNet – 16.771Mbps
3. Eclipse Internet – 15.925Mbps
4. BT – 14.878Mbps
5. Sky Broadband – 8.788Mbps
6. O2 (BE Broadband) – 6.812Mbps
7. EE (Orange UK) – 5.817Mbps
8. TalkTalk / Tiscali – 5.479Mbps

Top 8 UK ISPs – Upload Speed (Megabits/sec)
1. PlusNet – 4.797Mbps
2. BT – 3.507Mbps
3. Virgin Media – 2.940Mbps
4. Eclipse Internet – 2.796Mbps
5. Sky Broadband – 1.348Mbps
6. O2 (BE Broadband) – 0.852Mbps
7. EE (Orange) – 0.734Mbps
8. TalkTalk / Tiscali – 0.640Mbps

Now a Health Warning. Readers should always take anecdotal data like this with a huge pinch of salt. Every home or business is different and performance can be affected by all sorts of issues, many of which are beyond the ISPs ability to control. We do not consider the above data to be a reliable barometer for individual users but it can be used to highlight other changes in the market. Sadly the table doesn’t include smaller ISPs because they don’t produce enough data for a useful comparison.

On top of that anecdotal tests don’t always check and report the other important aspects of internet connectivity, such as Latency and Packet Loss performance.