Comparison site Broadband.co.uk has released its latest anecdotal monthly broadband speed testing results for December 2009. It shows that the average UK download speed for the largest ten ISPs has increased slightly since November (4.367Mbps) and currently stands at 4.478Mbps.

Cable giant Virgin Media retains its position as the fastest broadband ISP for downloads, raising its average speed from 7.214Mbps in November to 7.426Mbps in December 2009. Meanwhile 2nd place holder O2 ( including Be Broadband ) saw no real change from November and stuck with a top speed of 5.143Mbps.

Top 10 ISPs for Download Speed
1. Virgin Media – 7.426Mbps
2. O2 ( Be Broadband ) – 5.143Mbps
3. TalkTalk – 3.418Mbps
4. Sky Broadband – 3.361Mbps
5. Orange – 3.146Mbps
6. BT – 2.814Mbps
7. Tiscali – 2.788Mbps
8. PlusNet – 2.705Mbps
9. Eclipse Internet – 2.697Mbps
10. AOL – 2.021Mbps

Top 10 ISPs for Upload Speed
1. O2 ( Be Broadband ) - 0.753Mbps
2. Virgin Media - 0.548Mbps
3. TalkTalk - 0.488Mbps
4. Sky Broadband - 0.428Mbps
5. Orange - 0.410Mbps
6. BT - 0.354Mbps
7. Eclipse Internet - 0.336Mbps
8. Tiscali - 0.335Mbps
9. PlusNet - 0.333Mbps
10. AOL - 0.315Mbps

ISP O2 UK ( Be Broadband ) remains the fastest UK ISP for upload performance on a largely unchanged result of 0.753Mbps and AOL UK is yet again bottom in both charts. The average upload speed has remained almost static since November and currently stands at 0.467Mbps.

It's noted that average broadband speeds in the UK finished the year 22% higher than at the end of 2008, which can be largely attributed to the adoption of faster Cable Modem and ADSL2+ based broadband technology. We expect something similar in 2010 as more consumers are migrated onto faster products and the availability of BT’s fibre optic broadband services begin to surface.