Speeds
Reassuringly for consumers shelling out for next generation broadband services, Ofcom found fibre-to-the-cabinet and cable services delivered faster average speeds much closer to advertised speeds than current-generation broadband technologies.
The research investigated 11 packages from 7 ISPs, representing over 90 percent of home broadband subscribers in the UK, carrying out a massive 18m service performance tests over 1,700 homes in November and December.
Here is a chart from Ofcom.
Ofcom's research found speeds for ADSL services over copper lines ‘varied widely' and were typically ‘much lower' than advertised speeds.
The average download speed received for ‘up to' 20/24Mbit/s DSL packages was 6.2Mbit/s, 29 percent of the average ‘up to' speeds advertised. For ‘up to' 8Mbit/s DSL services, users typically got 3.4Mbit/s, 42 percent of average advertised ‘up to' speeds.
It found few of the actual speeds came close to those advertised as 3 percent of ADSL customers on ‘up to' 20 or 24Mbit/s DSL services received average download speeds of over 16Mbit/s, while 69 percent received average download speeds of 8Mbit/s or less.
However, BT's Infinity service, tested for the first time and currently available to 15 per cent of the population, performed better than ADSL services with average download speeds of 31.1Mbit/s, 78 percent of the advertised speeds.
Meanwhile, Virgin Media's cable services, which are currently available to almost half of the population delivered average download speeds that were much closer to advertised ‘up to' speeds than ADSL services, in fact between 90 and 96 percent of the advertised speeds, according to Ofcom's research.
The firm's highest speed (and most expensive) 50Mbit/s package had an average download speed of around 46Mbit/s.
However, Ofcom found that BT's Infinity service delivered the best upload speeds. BT's Infinity packages delivered average upload speeds of around 8Mbit/s - significantly higher than any other service measured in the research, as Virgin Media's ‘up to' 50Mbit/s service offered average upload speeds of around 2.5Mbit/s while all other ISP packages delivered average upload speeds of less than 1.5Mbit/s.
Here is a chart from Ofcom.
