March 2012 saw average download speeds recorded by users of our Broadband Speed Test increasing in comparison to the levels achieved in February's result, coming in at 10.73Mb. Average upload speed increased to 1.48Mb.
Increased speeds are likely in large part due to the start of Virgin Media's roll out of double or better speeds for cable customers, which will continue throughout 2012 affecting all but their 100Mb service. Virgin Media's average download and upload speeds have increased significantly by 1.98Mb to 19.63Mb with upload speeds seeing a small increase to 2.48Mb. The trend sees Virgin Media's average download speeds increasing by 4Mb over the last two months.
Fibre to the Cabinet provider Eclipse maintained second place despite seeing a small decrease in average download speed to a 11.51Mb average and upload speeds to 1.77Mb. BT Broadband held third place and made speed gains, with download speeds averaging at 9.47Mb and upload speeds at 1.75Mb.
The best performing non-fibre-based provider was again BE and O2 (who share a common infrastructure) in at 5th place with 6.08Mb average download speed over their Local Loop Unbundled ADSL2+ service. Plusnet came in at 4th place at 7.27Mb, a significant gain on previous months, but this is likely due sign ups for their competitively priced FttC Plusnet Fibre product.
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