Research by analysts at broadband.co.uk have shown that average broadband speeds grew by 22% during 2009.

“At the start of the year the average broadband speed test UK wide was 3.667Mbps. At the end of the year this had grown to an average speed of 4.478Mbps, a rise of 22%” Says Edd Dawson , Editor of broadband.co.uk.

The results were calculated from hundreds of thousands of broadband speed tests taken on the broadband.co.uk site during 2009 by ordinary broadband users UK wide.

The providers that showed the most impressive improvements were those that rolled out faster deals over the year such as BT (up 24%) and Plusnet (up 28%) with their up to 20Mbps deals and Virgin Media (up 22%) with their 50Mbps fibre optic packages.

Not all providers managed improvements over the year however, Be/O2 saw their average speed test drop by just under 13% year on year, and Sky saw a smaller drop of just over 4%.

“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.” Dawson continued.

December 2009 average speedtest results

1. Virgin Media – 7.426 Mbps
2. BE/O2 – 5.143 Mbps
3. TalkTalk – 3.418 Mbps
4. Sky – 3.361 Mbps
5. Orange – 3.146 Mbps
6. BT – 2.814 Mbps
7. Tiscali – 2.788 Mbps
8. Plusnet – 2.705 Mbps
9. Eclipse – 2.697 Mbps
10. AOL – 2.021 Mbps

All providers average – 4.478 Mbps

For full details including speed test results for individual suppliers please see the full results pdf.

For historical data please see our broadband speed test archive.