The Q2-2015 Top 7 UK Fastest National Home Broadband and Mobile ISPs

The second quarter has seen the average Internet download speed for the largest seven national home broadband ISPs increase from 24.72Mbps in Q1 to 25.47Mbps now, while the average for the primary Mobile Broadband operators reached 15.99Mbps (up from 14.42Mbps in Q1). Virgin Media remains the fastest fixed line provider and EE dominates mobile.

As usual it’s worth mentioning that some of the fastest fixed line broadband ISPs tend to perform better because they have a higher proportion of subscribers taking “superfast broadband” (e.g. FTTC, Cable, FTTH/P etc.) connections.

For example, it’s little wonder that Virgin are the top performer (average download of 57.17Mbps) for the big boys because their entry-level package is 50Mbps (this is also their most popular option), while many other providers remain hobbled by an older and slower base of less reliable ‘up to’ 20Mbps ADSL2+ lines.

Otherwise not much has changed since Q1, outside of the on-going spread of “superfast” (24Mbps+) connectivity to reach 95% of premises by 2017 through the Government’s Broadband Delivery UK scheme with BT (here). More recently Virgin has also committed to expand their cable network to around 60% of the UK by 2020 (here), although the deployment has only just begun.

The Fastest UK ISPs – Average Download Speed (Megabits per second)

No.	Operator	Q2 2015 Result	Q1 2015 Result	Q4 2014 Result
1.	Virgin Media	57.17Mbps	54.17Mbps	53.20Mbps
2.	BT	26.14Mbps	25.97Mbps	25.61Mbps
3.	Zen Internet	25.78Mbps	25.08Mbps	24.22Mbps
4.	PlusNet	24.38Mbps	23.28Mbps	22.64Mbps
5.	TalkTalk	16.52Mbps	16.20Mbps	15.25Mbps
6.	Sky Broadband	14.25Mbps	14.27Mbps	13.59Mbps
7.	EE	14.07Mbps	14.09Mbps	13.52Mbps

Average Speed = 25.47Mbps

The Fastest UK ISPs – Average Upload Speed

No.	Operator	Q2 2015 Result	Q1 2015 Result	Q4 2014 Result
1.	BT	7.99Mbps	7.96Mbps	7.64Mbps
2.	Zen Internet	7.85Mbps	7.65Mbps	7.47Mbps
3.	PlusNet	7.62Mbps	7.28Mbps	6.89Mbps
4.	Virgin Media	6.93Mbps	6.63Mbps	6.43Mbps
5.	EE	3.94Mbps	3.91Mbps	3.19Mbps
6.	Sky Broadband	3.78Mbps	4.49Mbps	3.79Mbps
7.	TalkTalk	3.13Mbps	2.95Mbps	2.73Mbps

Average Speed = 5.89Mbps

As usual it’s important to state that the above ISPs aren’t the fastest overall home broadband providers and if we were to expand our list in order to include niche companies, which often only focus upon smaller areas, then we’d need to include true fibre optic (FTTH/P) operators like Hyperoptic and Gigaclear (there are others but most don’t produce enough data to be included).

For example, Lancashire’s rural B4RN project scored a staggering average download speed of 322.07Mbps and 315.75Mbps for uploads. Meanwhile Hyperoptic delivered 143.28Mbps for download and 122.43Mbps for uploads, while Gigaclear scored 111.86Mbps on downloads and 133.95Mbps for uploads.

Most of the above ISPs also offer a 1000Mbps package, but not everybody takes the fastest and most expensive option. On top of that it’s difficult to reliably speed test such connections (they push the limits of online testing, routers and even some wired computer LAN links etc.).

Meanwhile, on the Mobile Broadband (3G and 4G) front, performance among the four primary operators has continued to improve at a sharper pace and that’s largely thanks to the impact of faster 4G, which is being rapidly deployed across the UK. In this field EE benefits from having had a long head-start and so it’s no surprise to find that their superior 4G coverage is giving them a strong lead, but the others are catching.

The Fastest Mobile Operators – Download Speed

No.	Operator	Q2 2015 Result	Q1 2015 Result	Q4 2014 Result
1.	EE	23.35Mbps	20.43Mbps	13.26Mbps
2.	Vodafone	15.45Mbps	14.26Mbps	13.78Mbps
3.	O2	12.60Mbps	11.63Mbps	10.69Mbps
4.	Three UK	12.56Mbps	11.38Mbps	9.12Mbps

Average Speed = 15.99Mbps

The Fastest Mobile Operators – Upload Speed

No.	Operator	Q2 2015 Result	Q1 2015 Result	Q4 2014 Result
1.	EE	9.37Mbps	9.09Mbps	6.32Mbps
2.	Vodafone	7.11Mbps	6.65Mbps	6.46Mbps
3.	O2	6.17Mbps	5.80Mbps	5.47Mbps
4.	Three UK	5.21Mbps	5.30Mbps	4.50Mbps

Average Speed = 6.96Mbps

Disclaimer: The above data is gathered using Ookla’s universal Speedtest.net service and we then calculate the average speeds from only the providers listed above (sadly Ookla’s overall figures are too skewed by business providers for us to use their own average).

In any case it’s also important to take average speeds like those above 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 provider’s ability to control (e.g. slow wifi or poor home wiring), thus we do not consider the above data to be a reliable barometer for individual users, but it can help to highlight general changes in the market.

Ookla’s data also attempts to reflect the fastest sustainable throughput performance by dropping a chunk of the slowest tests and a smaller slice of the fastest results for each ISP, which has its merits but also skews the results a bit.