Broadband-comparison site Broadband.co.uk has claimed that the average connection speed in the UK has risen by 22 per cent in the last year.
According to figures from its speed tests, of which it claims to run tens of thousands each month, Broadband.co.uk said that the average speed of a connection in the UK was 4.478Mbps in December 2009, up from 3.67Mbps in December 2008.
Virgin Media offers the highest average speed at 7.426Mbps, followed by Be Broadband and O2, which share a common infrastructure, at 5.143Mbps.
At the other end of the scale, AOL offers an average of just over 2Mbps. In terms of upload speed, Be and O2 are top with 0.753Mbps with AOL again lagging behind its competitors with 0.315Mbps.
"The providers that show stagnation are those who haven't rolled out new higher-speed products during the last year, so we'll watch with interest as to how they respond to competition over the course of 2010," said Edd Dawson of Broadband.co.uk.
The site also showed that broadband speeds can depend on what time of day you log on – the average speed at peak times (between 1800 and midnight) were significantly lower than for the overnight period, at 4.172 and 4.822Mbps respectively.