Top 9 UK Fastest Broadband ISPs by Internet Speed for July 2012

The latest batch of anecdotal UK consumer broadband ISP speed testing data from Broadband.co.uk, which covers the past month of July 2012, reveals that the average internet download speed has declined slightly from 17.662Mbps (Megabits per second) in June 2012 to 17.262Mbps now.

Meanwhile the average upload speed reached 2.126Mbps over the same period (practically unchanged from 2.100Mbps in June 2012). Take note that the top three providers tend to be disproportionately faster than the others, which is largely due to their rivals having either a lack of competing superfast broadband technology or limited uptake of similar services.

Overall this month’s table remains largely unchanged with Virgin Media still the fastest broadband ISP for download speed at 31.198Mbps (up from 30.106Mbps last month), followed by Eclipse Internet and BT. Curiously AOL has almost doubled its download performance from last month, although even that hasn’t been enough to move it out of the bottom third.

Top 9 UK ISPs – Download Speed (Megabits/sec)
1. Virgin Media – 31.198Mbps
2. Eclipse Internet – 16.054Mbps
3. BT – 14.916Mbps
4. PlusNet – 9.488Mbps
5. Sky Broadband – 7.419Mbps
6. O2 (BE Broadband) – 6.458Mbps
7. TalkTalk / Tiscali – 6.342Mbps
8. AOL – 6.000Mbps
9. Orange UK – 4.762Mbps

Top 9 UK ISPs – Upload Speed (Megabits/sec)
1. BT – 3.279Mbps
2. Eclipse Internet – 2.812Mbps
3. Virgin Media – 2.616Mbps
4. AOL – 0.936Mbps
5. O2 (BE Broadband) – 0.886Mbps
6. TalkTalk / Tiscali – 0.839Mbps
7. Sky Broadband – 0.805Mbps
8. PlusNet – 0.758Mbps
9. Orange UK – 0.598Mbps

As usual we ask readers to take anecdotal data like this with a huge pinch of salt. Every home 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 table to be a reliable barometer for individual users but it can be used to highlight other changes (e.g. connection technology) in the market.

This table only covers the largest ISPs that deliver internet services on a truly national scale and thus account for roughly 95% of the UK’s consumer fixed line broadband market.