"We've seen some great results from providers during February with the majority showing improvement." Says 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 February 2010 by ordinary broadband users UK wide.
The divide between Virgin Media, with their fibre optic network, and the rest of the UK's broadband suppliers, who still rely predominantly on copper based ADSL solutions, is stark with Virgin being almost 60% faster on average than nearest rivals O2/Be and 77% faster than the UK wide average.
"Virgin Media results go from strength to strength and have the accolade of being the first provider to break through the 8Mbps average speed barrier.
We will watch with interest to see if BT's fibre to the cabinet network can help some of the other providers to close the gap." Dawson continued.
February 2010 average speedtest results
1.Virgin Media – 8.249 Mbps
2.BE/O2 – 5.204 Mbps
3.TalkTalk – 3.765 Mbps
4.Sky – 3.569 Mbps
5.Orange – 3.484 Mbps
6.BT – 2.941 Mbps
7.Tiscali – 2.837 Mbps
8.Eclipse – 2.834 Mbps
9.Plusnet – 2.671 Mbps
10.AOL – 2.321 Mbps
All providers average – 4.659 Mbps