Posted: 02nd Dec, 2010 By: MarkJ

Comparison site
Broadband.co.uk has released its latest anecdotal monthly broadband ISP consumer
speed testing results for the past month of
November 2010, which saw the average UK internet download rate rocket to
5.555Mbps (up from 5.043Mbps in October 2010). Virgin Media is now top of the chart for both download and upload performance, the latter of which had previously been dominated by O2 ( Be Broadband ).
Cable operator Virgin Media UK continued to be the
fastest broadband provider for download speeds and reported an average rate of
10.812Mbps, which is significantly up from 9.338Mbps last month. The performance jump is most likely due to the impending
launch of their new 100Mbps service this month (i.e. adding new capacity), although they have broken the 10Mbps barrier once before (July 2010).
Popular ISP O2 ( Be Broadband ) remained in
2nd place with a somewhat lower speed result of
5.400Mbps, which is down from 5.726Mbps last month. Both O2 and Be Broadband share the same network and continue to be the fastest of all the DSL providers, although that position could soon come under threat. BT in particular saw a significant jump in speed this month from 3.862Mbps to 4.384Mbps.
Top ISPs for Download Speed
1. Virgin Media – 10.812Mbps
2. O2 ( Be Broadband ) – 5.400Mbps
3. Eclipse Internet – 4.781Mbps
4. BT – 4.384Mbps
5. Sky Broadband – 3.976Mbps
6. TalkTalk (Tiscali) – 3.628Mbps
7. Orange – 3.051Mbps
8. PlusNet – 3.284Mbps
9. AOL – 2.599Mbps
Top ISPs for Upload Speed
1. Virgin Media - 0.845Mbps
2. O2 ( Be Broadband ) - 0.794Mbps
3. BT - 0.668Mbps
4. Sky Broadband - 0.511Mbps
5. TalkTalk ( Tiscali ) - 0.480Mbps
6. Eclipse Internet - 0.468Mbps
7. PlusNet - 0.430Mbps
8. Orange - 0.372Mbps
9. AOL - 0.370Mbps
However the biggest news is by far the fact that O2 ( Be Broadband ) have lost the
top spot for upload performance, with Virgin Media jumping from 0.745Mbps in October to come 1st on 0.845Mbps now. The change has come about due to Virgin's huge upload speed boost last September (
here).