The Top 9 UK Fastest Big Broadband ISPs for April 2012

The latest monthly anecdotal consumer broadband ISP speed testing data from Broadband.co.uk, which covers the month of April 2012, reveals that the average UK internet download speed has surged upwards once again from 10.73Mbps (Megabits per second) in March 2012 to 14.12Mbps now.

Similarly the average upload speed has also jumped from 1.482Mbps to 1.904Mbps over the same period. Nearly all of this increase can be put down to the ever increasing availability and uptake of superfast broadband services by Virgin Media, BT and Eclipse Internet customers. The rest continue to offer slower ADSL2+ services or have yet to make much of a dent with their own superfast packages.

It will come as no surprise to anybody that Virgin Media, which recently began doubling its customers broadband speeds (here), continues to be fastest ISP in the UK for download performance – 24.793Mbps (up from 19.633Mbps in March 2012). But BT has finally unseated Virgin to become the fastest ISP for upload speeds with a surprise score of 2.909Mbps (up from 1.753Mbps).

Top 9 UK ISPs – Download Speed (Megabits/sec)
1. Virgin Media – 24.793Mbps
2. BT – 13.397Mbps
3. Eclipse Internet – 12.826Mbps
4. PlusNet – 6.960Mbps
5. O2 ( Be Broadband ) – 6.092Mbps
6. TalkTalk / Tiscali – 4.981Mbps
7. Sky Broadband – 4.855Mbps
8. Orange UK – 4.368Mbps
9. AOL – 3.609Mbps

Top 9 UK ISPs – Upload Speed (Megabits/sec)
1. BT – 2.909Mbps
2. Virgin Media – 2.599Mbps
3. Eclipse Internet – 2.237Mbps
4. O2 ( Be Broadband ) – 0.904Mbps
5. PlusNet – 0.756Mbps
6. Sky Broadband – 0.619Mbps
7. Orange UK – 0.579Mbps
8. TalkTalk / Tiscali – 0.566Mbps
9. AOL – 0.559Mbps

The first half of this year has been dominated by some significant shifts in existing superfast broadband technology, not least with major providers like BT and Virgin Media both pledging to double their customers’ speeds. But remove the disproportionate impact of such services and you’re still left with a situation where most providers deliver woeful averages of roughly 5-7Mbps.

As usual readers should take anecdotal data like this with a huge pinch of salt. Every home is different and performance can be affected by all sorts of things, most of which are beyond an ISPs control. We do not consider the above to be a reliable barometer for individual users but it can help to reflect overall market changes.