Quote:
Average cable broadband speeds increased by 58% in the six months to November 2012
1.11 The average download speed of a UK residential cable broadband connection increased by 10.4Mbit/s (58%) to 28.3Mbit/s in the six months to November 2012 (Figure 1.4). This was largely a result of Virgin Media’s ongoing speed upgrade programme which is due to be completed by the end of June 2013 (although upgrades to its 120Mbit/s services will continue until the end of the year). Over the same six-month period the average speed of a residential ADSL connection also increased, albeit by just 0.2Mbit/s (3%) to 6.0Mbit/s, partly as a result of ADSL1 customers being upgraded onto faster ADSL2+ services.
|
Yay, "double" everyone's speeds, gain a 58% improvement in average...
Still, catching up with BT. Average speed on VM "fibre" is now only 31% slower than on BT "fibre".
Peak time congestion looks like it's still bad though mildly improved, with VM cable customers losing on average 11-16% of their speed at peak time vs. 6% on FTTC.
That's an improvement of about 3% on VM and about 6% on its' competitors. Except for VM 30Mb customers, who saw their average speeds actually reduce.
Funny enough, BT 38Mb is outperforming VM 30Mb and BT 76Mb is outperforming VM 60Mb, which you might think is obvious, but I recall VM advertising their competing service would be faster due to line losses on xDSL.
... Apparently they were wrong.
Unsurprisingly, on the upload, BT 38Mb is faster than all of VM's surveyed tariffs, including VM 100Mb, and on comparable tariffs closer to triple.
Still. I think the most significant is that VM have managed to cut peak time speed loss on the 100Mb service by about 20%, which means quite significant improvements in capacity and reductions in congestion.
Similarly, average latency on VM is now finally lower than on BT Infinity (when averaged over 24 hours) which again indicates capacity improvements but packet loss is still ten times higher. Unfortunately latency still increases enough at peak times that it ends up worse than on BT.
Loading a web page still takes longer on VM 100Mb than BT 76Mb though that particular result is completely insignificant and just there for laughs...
VM DNS failure rates are also still several orders of magnitude higher than anyone else's as is jitter, but again the latter has improved about 20% since 6 months prior.