New research from Epitiro, a broadband benchmarking group, has revealed that Tesco broadband, an ISP from Britain’s largest supermarket chain, delivered the best email delivery performance in the last year to March 2008.

Epitiro claims that Tesco delivered 99.9% of emails within three minutes of dispatch. Virgin Media came a close second with 99.8% of emails reaching their destination within the same space of time, with Orange and Pipex both achieving figures above 99%. Demon completes the top five with 96.3%.

The report found that the worst time to send an email is between 5 – 6pm on Thursday, when the volume of emails passing over the Internet is at its highest. During this ‘email rush hour’ an estimated 7% of emails are either severely delayed or lost altogether.

Email delivery varied significantly by month over the course of the period tested. The report also reveals that throughout autumn the average performance of ISPs dropped below the industry average of 95.4%. In September, October and November, eight emails out of 100 took longer than three minutes to arrive.

Epitiro’s Managing Director, Gavin Johns, recommends that IT managers set email performance standards with their chosen ISP before the service begins: