"At the start of the year the average broadband speed test UK wide was 3.667Mbps. At the end of the year this had grown to an average speed of 4.478Mbps, a rise of 22%,” sais Edd Dawson , editor of broadband.co.uk.
The results were calculated from hundreds of thousands of broadband speed tests taken on the broadband.co.uk site during 2009 by ordinary broadband users UK wide.
The providers that showed the most impressive improvements were those that rolled out faster deals over the year such as BT (up 24%) and Plusnet (up 28%) with its up to 20Mbps deals and Virgin Media (up 22%) with its 50Mbps fibre optic packages.
Not all providers managed improvements over the year however; Be/O2 saw their average speed test drop by just under 13% year on year, and Sky saw a smaller drop of just over 4%.
"The providers that show stagnation are those who haven't rolled out new higher speed products during the last year, so we'll watch with interest as to how they respond to competition over the course of 2010," Dawson continued.
December 2009 average speed test results were: 1. Virgin Media – 7.426 Mbps; 2. BE/O2 – 5.143 Mbps; 3. TalkTalk – 3.418 Mbps; 4. Sky – 3.361 Mbps; 5. Orange – 3.146 Mbps; 6. BT – 2.814 Mbps; 7. Tiscali – 2.788 Mbps; 8. Plusnet – 2.705 Mbps; 9. Eclipse – 2.697 Mbps; 10. AOL – 2.021 Mbps. All providers average – 4.478 Mbps.