James R | On 20, Dec 2013

Good news for Virgin Media customers: you have the fastest broadband in the UK, according to Netflix.

The internet TV provider’s latest sped test shows that Britain’s broadband is accelerating. Indeed, broadband speeds in the UK were at an average of 2.48Mbps in October 2013, higher than the 2.4Mbps recorded in September.

Britain remains slower than several countries, though, including Sweden and Norway. The fastest broadband in the world can be found in the Netherlands, with an average internet connection speed of 3.16Mbps – an interesting coincidence as Netflix has just launched a new service there. Do the company pick their territories based on speed, or do they just get lucky?

In Britain, Netflix appears to have been equally shrewd in its partnerships: its most recent deal has seen them team up with Virgin Media to offer their subscription-based streaming through the company’s set top boxes.

Virgin overtook BT to seize the first spot, with O2 following in third place.

“These ratings reflect the average performance of all Netflix streams on each ISPs network from Nov. 2012 through Sept. 2013 and average performance during prime time starting in Oct. 2013,” explains Netflix. “The average is well below the peak performance due to many factors including the variety of encodes we use to deliver the TV shows and movies we carry as well as home Wi-Fi and the variety of devices our members use. Those factors cancel out when comparing across ISPs, so these relative rankings are a good indicator of the consistent performance typically experienced across all users on an ISP network.”

The top five six broadband providers and the speed of their connections:

Virgin 2.69
BT 2.50
O2 2.32
BSkyB 2.31
EverythingEverywhere 2.28
TalkTalk 2.27

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