Broadband News

Karoo keeps the top spot in June speed tests

Thursday, 24 July 2008

Garnet Roach garnet@consumerchoices.co.uk

Once again, Karoo beat the big names to the top spot in the 8Mb speed category - the UK’s most popular broadband packages.

Karoo (www.Karoo.co.uk) had an average reliability of 50.2 per cent throughout June - a good score for an ADSL provider - and up a little from May’s average of 48.2 per cent of its advertised speed.

O2 (www.O2.co.uk) also held onto its second place spot in the up to 8Mb Cruiser Weight category with customers enjoying 48.4 per cent of their advertised speed, while Eclipse (www.Eclipse.net) moved up from sixth place to third, pushing out BT (www.BT.com) which had held third place in May.

BT dropped down into fifth place with its average speed falling from 42.9 per cent in May to 37.9 per cent in June.

Not much had changed in the Welter Weight category, with cable provider Virgin Media (www.VirginMedia.com) continuing to deliver more than 80 per cent of its advertised 2Mb speed. Tiscali (www.Tiscali.co.uk) came in second with a very respectable 73.2 per cent, while Sky Broadband (www.Sky.com) and Orange (www.Orange.co.uk) only managed a little over 65 per cent each - in a category which Michael Phillips, BroadbandChoices.co.uk product director has said is far easier to deliver on.

Although Virgin Media didn’t top the Heavy Weight category in terms of reliability; customers received an average of 36.9 per cent of their advertised 20Mb in June, it did deliver the fastest actual speed with an average of 7.4Mb.

O2 had the highest level of reliability with 40 per cent, but with both its 16Mb and 20Mb packages included in this category this gave an average actual speed of 6.6Mb.

Phillips said: “It will be interesting to see how the Heavy Weight category expands over the coming months following the launch of BT’s 21 Century Network, offering more providers the opportunity to join the likes of Be Broadband (www.BeThere.co.uk) in offering speeds of up to 24Mb.”

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