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Broadband Choices

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Virgin Media continues at the top

(04-04-08) - Cable provider Virgin Media has held onto the top spot in BroadbandChoices.co.uk speed test results for March.

writes Garnet Roach garnet@consumerchoices.co.uk

With customers enjoying an average of 55.1 per cent of their advertised speed, Virgin Media (www.VirginMedia.com) massively outperformed its nearest ADSL competitors.

Karoo (www.Karoo.co.uk) ranked second in March with customers getting an average of 46.4 per cent, moving up from seventh place the previous month.

Although still in the top six, both AOL (www.AOL.co.uk) and Tiscali (www.Tiscali.co.uk) dropped two places since February. AOL dropped from second place in February to fourth place in March with an average of 39.9 per cent, while Tiscali fell from fourth to sixth with customers getting an average of 37.4 per cent of their advertised speed in March.

Virgin Media also came top in the “slow” up to 2Mb packages, with customers getting an average of more than 80.5 per cent of their advertised speed, with customer of its nearest rival, Orange (www.Orange.co.uk) getting 70.8 per cent.

Michael Phillips, BroadbandChoices.co.uk product director noted that speeds of up to 2Mb are much easier to deliver. “Comparing the results from the ‘slow’ category with those of the ‘super fast’ packages, we can see that those on the up to 2Mb packages actually get a connection that’s a lot closer to their advertised speed. It’s a lot harder to deliver on a speed of 20Mb or more and this needs to be made clearer to customers signing up to these ‘super fast’ packages,” he said.

Customers on Virgin Media’s up to 20Mb XL package received an average of just 33.3 per cent of this speed, but this was still far ahead of Sky Broadband's (www.Sky.com) up to 16Mb offering which averaged only 27.2 per cent, but super fast pioneer, Be Broadband (www.BeThere.co.uk) came bottom of the pack, delivering an average of only 24.6 per cent on its up to 24Mb packages.

Download our free Speed Tester and see how fast your provider really is.

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Page Last Updated: Monday, 7-Apr-08