Ofcom: Broadband speeds increase by 22%

Average broadband speeds increased by 22% in the six months to May 2013, according to Ofcom’s latest overview of UK internet connections.

In those six months, speeds increased by 2.7Mbit/s to 14.7Mbit/s – a 64% year on year increase.

Ofcom found that the take-up of superfast broadband and BT’s ADSL2+ has driven increases in average download speeds – 19% of residential fixed broadband connections were classed as being superfast in May 2013, five percentage points higher than in November 2012 and 11 percentage points higher than in May 2012.

Ofcom notes that the shift to higher-speed services is partially as a result of Virgin Media’s ‘double speeds’ upgrade programme, provided by most of its cable broadband connections.

In addition, customers are also choosing to migrate to fibre broadband services – over the course of the 2012/13 financial year, the number of BT retail fibre broadband connections increased from approximately 550,000 to over 1.3 million.

The report also found that urban broadband speeds are increasing substantially over rural connections, largely because the average line length from the exchange to the end-user’s premises is shorter in urban areas, resulting in less signal loss and higher average ADSL broadband speeds.

Ofcom’s full broadband report can be read here.