Broadband News

Speed test results for April 2015

• Friday, May 1, 2015 11:18 AM
• 9 comments

Welcome to May and while the daily papers are full of General Election coverage our monthly tasks do not change and thus we have the latest round-up of broadband speed tests. After a number of months of splitting out high-volume and low-volume providers we have combined them into a single table to make comparisons easier.

If your provider is missing most likely we did not have enough tests from enough locations to have useful statistics so run a speed test.

Fastest 15 Provider Broadband Speeds in April 2015 - (ordered by median speed)
Provider	Median Download	Mean Download	Median Upload	Mean Upload	Speed of top 10%
Hyperoptic	87.2 Mbps	188.5 Mbps	72.6 Mbps	166.5 Mbps	565 Mbps
Virgin Media	48.5 Mbps	57.3 Mbps	5.7 Mbps	6.5 Mbps	122 Mbps
AAISP	19 Mbps	26.5 Mbps	3.3 Mbps	6.3 Mbps	61.3 Mbps
Zen Internet	18.7 Mbps	27.2 Mbps	4.3 Mbps	6.7 Mbps	46.5 Mbps
EE Mobile (Orange/T-Mobile)	18.6 Mbps	22 Mbps	3.5 Mbps	5.8 Mbps	46.5 Mbps
BT	18.4 Mbps	25 Mbps	4.7 Mbps	6.3 Mbps	60.7 Mbps
IDNet	16.4 Mbps	27.3 Mbps	2.1 Mbps	6.6 Mbps	63.2 Mbps
PlusNet	15.1 Mbps	23.1 Mbps	1.5 Mbps	6.4 Mbps	58.2 Mbps
KC	12.9 Mbps	32.7 Mbps	0.8 Mbps	5.2 Mbps	95.4 Mbps
Entanet	12.3 Mbps	25.4 Mbps	1.7 Mbps	7.7 Mbps	61 Mbps
Sky	10.6 Mbps	15.9 Mbps	1 Mbps	4.2 Mbps	35.7 Mbps
O2 Mobile	9.8 Mbps	15.5 Mbps	1.5 Mbps	3.6 Mbps	37.2 Mbps
TalkTalk	8 Mbps	14.8 Mbps	0.7 Mbps	2.3 Mbps	37.2 Mbps
EE	7.9 Mbps	13.4 Mbps	0.8 Mbps	3 Mbps	35 Mbps
Daisy	6.9 Mbps	15.1 Mbps	0.7 Mbps	4.5 Mbps	35.6 Mbps

Remember particularly for the smaller providers, they may appear some months and not others, so a quick mention goes to providers like Gigaclear - 127 Mbps, B4RN - 171 Mbps, Wessex Internet - 34.9 Mbps (mean download speeds).

The web based speed test has been recording latency performance for the last few months while the download and upload tests are underway and we have just made the results visible for individuals after the test. The purpose of this new test is to illustrate buffer bloat problems, which are often down to very large buffers in consumer routers with the large buffers causing problems with the TCP/IP protocol such that one user/app can dominate the connection, we will blog more about the results in a few days. Put simply though, if your speed test comes up as grade A for buffer bloat then a web user is likely to happily co-exist with a video stream that otherwise fills the connection.

As usual to help people track the ups and downs of the main technology types, we have split out the ADSL/ADSL2+ and FTTC/cable speeds.

ADSL2+ Connection Speed Tests April 2015
Provider	Median Download	Mean Download	Median Upload	Mean Upload
All Providers	4.5 Mbps	7.4 Mbps	0.6 Mbps	0.8 Mbps
BT	4.7 Mbps	5.9 Mbps	0.4Mbps	0.5 Mbps
Plusnet	5.7 Mbps	6.8 Mbps	0.5 Mbps	0.5 Mbps
Sky	6.2 Mbps	7.2 Mbps	0.7 Mbps	0.7 Mbps
TalkTalk	5.6 Mbps	6.6 Mbps	0.6 Mbps	0.7 Mbps

We only split the different technology speeds for the largest providers where the sample size is large enough to ensure a reasonable mixture representative of the UK.

Fibre Based Connection Speed Tests April 2015
Provider	Median Download	Mean Download	Median Upload	Mean Upload
FTTC Overall (excludes Virgin Media)	33.2 Mbps	34.4 Mbps	8.8 Mbps	10 Mbps
BT	35.9 Mbps	37.2 Mbps	9 Mbps	10.2 Mbps
Plusnet	36.9 Mbps	38.4 Mbps	12.7 Mbps	11.9 Mbps
Sky	28.4 Mbps	28.5 Mbps	8.4 Mbps	8 Mbps
TalkTalk	33 Mbps	33.5 Mbps	1.9 Mbps	6.2 Mbps
Virgin Media	48.5 Mbps	57.3 Mbps	5.7 Mbps	6.5 Mbps

The mean upload speed for PlusNet being lower than the median may look unusual, but if you look at the distribution of results there is no particular plateau so we can expect the mean and median to shift around each other each month. The download profile shows a lot of users on the £19.99 up to 76 Mbps service, with the capping for the cheaper £14.99 Fibre service very evident, suggesting that for a good many the extra speed available is not worth the extra £5 per month.

With our mobile compatible speed test that has been gathering data now for over eight months we can also say that while mobile devices are increasingly used for web access, if you want the best experience a PC is still best, for BT users the average PC speed test in April 2015 was 26.5 Mbps, on a mobile phone 21.5 Mbps and a tablet 18.3 Mbps, on other providers mobile phones also appear to out perform tablets overall. A chunk of this difference is the Wi-Fi capabilities of the router and device, though of course some of the PC tests will still be Wi-Fi based. If the proportion of mobile devices continues to climb we might have to filter the overall results, we are seeing tablets and phones hitting the maximum speeds of the FTTC services, but overall we see around 1% of phones with results over 90 Mbps (70 Mbps for top 1% on tablets).

Don't forget you can look at where the fastest speeds are on both our maps and also our broadband availability checker which will do the maths for you based on your postcode, and show the average speed test in your area along with the weekly updating levels of fibre coverage.

Andrew Ferguson

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