The Top 7 Fastest UK Fixed Line Home Broadband ISPs – November 2013

The latest monthly performance study of the United Kingdom’s largest seven home broadband ISPs has found that the average download speed in November 2013 was 17.304Mbps (up from 16.842Mbps last month) and the average upload speed climbed to 3.370Mbps (up from 2.896Mbps).

According to Broadband.co.uk’s anecdotal data, cable operator Virgin Media continues to be the fastest ISP for downloads with an average speed of 34.916Mbps (up from 33.989Mbps in October 2013). Indeed we fully expect them to pull even further ahead after announcing another significant speed boost for their network, which will begin in February 2014 (here).

Broadly speaking the table for download speed hasn’t changed much but the story for upload performance is different. BT have extended their lead for upstream speed to top 5.290Mbps (up from 4.702Mbps last month) and Virgin Media has jumped over PlusNet to reach 2nd place with a rate of 4.263Mbps (up sharply from 3.214Mbps).

Sky Broadband also showed a strong improvement in uploads to reach 3Mbps (up from 1.926Mbps). Clearly the rising adoption of FTTC (“fibre broadband“) is now having a wider impact.

Top 7 UK ISPs – Average Download Speed (Megabits per second)
1. Virgin Media – 34.916Mbps
2. BT – 18.674Mbps
3. PlusNet – 16.535Mbps
4. Sky Broadband – 12.410Mbps
5. EE (Orange) – 8.578Mbps
6. TalkTalk (Tiscali) – 7.904Mbps
7. O2/BE Broadband (BSkyB Owned) – 6.638Mbps

Top 7 UK ISPs – Average Upload Speed
1. BT – 5.290Mbps
2. Virgin Media – 4.263Mbps
3. PlusNet – 3.889Mbps
4. Sky Broadband – 3.003Mbps
5. EE (Orange) – 1.633Mbps
6. TalkTalk (Tiscali) – 0.941Mbps
7. O2/BE Broadband (BSkyB Owned) – 0.809Mbps

Disclaimer: Please take anecdotal data like this with a big 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 data to be a reliable barometer for individual users but it can help to highlight other changes in the market.

Furthermore faster speeds from the latest “super-fast” connections (FTTC, FTTP etc.) can have a disproportionate impact compared with the older and often significantly slower copper-based ADSL2+ (up to 20-24Mbps) services that still dominate most homes.

Unfortunately the source data doesn’t separate the results out by technology or include smaller ISPs (not enough data). If smaller providers were included then ISPs like B4RN or Hyperoptic would probably top the charts with their 1000Mbps capable fibre optic networks.