Virgin tops broadband speed tests

Virgin Media has beaten O2 and Be Broadband to take the crown for fastest average broadband speed in September 2008.

The cable broadband provider offered its customers an average download speed of 6.128Mbps last month, beating O2 and Be's 5.321Mbps, according to broadband.co.uk.

However, O2 and Be, who share an infrastructure though are marketed as separate entities, won the upload speed battle, with a speed of 0.807Mbps against Virgin's 0.459Mbps.

"The results show the fruits of Virgin's work to improve download speeds in recent months and we expect the results to improve further for Virgin as their 50Mbps service becomes more widely available over the coming months," said Edd Dawson of broadband.co.uk.

At the other end of the scale, Eclipse Internet had the lowest average download speed of 1.892Mbps, followed by AOL with 2.009Mbps.

In terms of uploads, AOL was the slowest with 0.294Mbps and its Carphone Warehouse stablemate, TalkTalk, was second slowest at 0.312Mbps.

www.broadband.co.uk