UK broadband speeds on the rise

Across the UK, consumers are now achieving 22% faster broadband speeds at home than 12 months ago, according to Ofcom.

According to Advanced Television, this increase was mainly as a result of consumers moving onto higher speed packages. In November 2011, for the first time more than half (58%) of UK residential broadband connections had a headline, or advertised speed of above 10Mbit/s, up from 48% in May 2011.

Despite this good news, however, still more than 4 in 10 broadband consumers are on packages with speeds of 10Mbit/s or less. Many of these would be able to get faster speeds if they switched package or provider for little or no extra cost.

Each of the main providers are actively trying to increase speeds, with Virgin Media and Sky’s latest developments summarised below:

Virgin Media

Virgin Media has the fastest widely available broadband offering in the UK and it is actively trying to make this available to its entire network.

This week, it has announced that more cable areas are receiving their 100Mb superfast broadband which provides customers access to more than thirteen times the national average internet speed.

These speeds allow even high quality movies to be downloaded in less than a couple of minutes or ensure family, friends and housemates can all have an outstanding experience when using connected TVs, computers, games consoles, tablets or smartphones at the same time.

Virgin Media’s programme of work to enable superfast 100Mb broadband is now ahead of schedule and will be complete this spring, having originally been due to finish in mid 2012.

Sky

Sky intends to develop its broadband offering in the UK, which already holds 17% market share.

Over the next few months it intends to extend its network to reach even more UK homes, aiming to cover 88% of the UK by June 2013 – taking in more than 1 million extra homes.

It also intends to provide customers with free WiFi wherever they are, powered by The Cloud, allowing free access to more than 10,000 hotspots across the UK. Sky believes this will prove particularly valuable for customers who access Sky content on the go, with high quality wireless delivering an even better experience for Sky Go and Sky’s other video-rich applications.

Finally, from April, Sky is going to be adding a fibre broadband product to its range from April. For £20 a month, customers will be able to access download speeds of up to 40 megabits. From launch the new product will be available to around 30% of UK homes, growing over time in line with BT’s fibre roll-out programme.