Communications regulator Ofcom has confirmed that April will see the first release of its new broadband speed league table, which will reveal the real-world performance of UK ISPs. It will be based off the same system that allowed Ofcom to report the country's average downstream speed of 3.6Mbps (megabits per second) in January (original news).

PCPro notes that the technology employed for testing will be provided by Samknows, which are busy installing broadband performance monitoring devices (specially modified routers) in up to 7,000 homes around the UK. This sort of method should be much more reliable and extensive than the usual anecdotal website based speed testers.

Naturally some ISPs will be nervous about the results and testing methodologies employed, while others are already known to be questioning the effectiveness of any results based off such a limited sample size. We hope that Ofcom doesn’t just look at the largest providers and offers a fair view of smaller ISPs too, which are frequently and unfairly ignored despite often being of a better quality.