Comparison site Broadband.co.uk has released its latest anecdotal monthly broadband speed testing results for April 2009. It shows that the average UK broadband download speed has now broken through the 4Mbps mark for the first time and hit 4.137Mbps, while the average upload speed stood at 427Kbps (0.42Mbps).

Elsewhere Virgin Media have managed to retain their lead as the UK's fastest broadband ISP with an average speed of 6.190Mbps for the month. Rival O2 ( Be Broadband ) has also improved its performance and is now only a short step away from the front runner with 6.045Mbps:

Top 10 ISPs for Download Speed
1. Virgin Media - 6.190Mbps
2. O2 ( Be Broadband ) - 6.045Mbps
3. TalkTalk - 3.413Mbps
4. Sky Broadband - 3.337Mbps
5. Orange - 3.033Mbps
6. PlusNet - 3.002Mbps
7. BT - 2.762Mbps
8. Tiscali - 2.742Mbps
9. Eclipse Internet - 2.681Mbps
10. AOL - 2.249Mbps

Top 10 ISPs for Upload Speed
1. O2 ( Be Broadband ) - 0.777Mbps
2. Virgin Media - 0.477Mbps
3. TalkTalk - 0.471Mbps
4. Sky Broadband - 0.393Mbps
5. Orange - 0.386Mbps
6. Eclipse Internet - 0.381Mbps
7. Tiscali - 0.343Mbps
8. PlusNet - 0.340Mbps
9. BT - 0.320Mbps
10. AOL - 0.311Mbps

Happily O2 ( Be Broadband ) remains the fastest UK ISP for upload performance and appears to have recovered from a small decline earlier this year, which was due to some localised congestion problems. More depressing is AOL UK's consistently bottom placing in both download and upload performance charts. Sadly the above test does not include data from smaller providers.