British telecom and broadcast regulator Ofcom yesterday published its latest research into the performance of home broadband services in the UK, which shines a light on the performance available to homes in the and are obtained by measuring the performance delivered to customers’ routers, and data provided by the UK’s four largest broadband providers.

Ofcom said that the research shows that average download speeds for home broadband have continued to increase.

The average download speed was 69.4 Mbit/s in March 2023, a 17 percent increase year-on-year, as people have upgraded to higher-bandwidth services, including full-fibre connections.

“Download speeds determine the time it takes for information to be delivered to a user’s device. Higher download speeds are important when downloading large files, such as games, films, or apps, or when streaming high-resolution video content,” Ofcom said in a media statement yesterday.

The proportion of lines receiving a 24-hour average download speed of at least 30 Mbit/s was 88 percent in March 2023, up from 83 percent in March 2022.

Three per cent of connections had an average 24-hour actual download speed of less than 10 Mbit/s in 2023, down from 4 percent in 2022. Less than one percent of lines had an advertised download speed under 10 Mbit/s.

Meanwhile, there was a large increase in average upload speeds, rising to 18.4 Mbit/s in March 2023. This was a year-on-year increase of 7.8 Mbit/s (73 percent).

The gap between urban and rural speeds has narrowed. There was a 26 percent difference between average urban (70.3 Mbit/s) and rural (56.0 Mbit/s) download speeds during the 8pm-10pm peak-time period — down from 58 percent in 2022, the regulator said.

Cable and full-fibre packages provided the fastest download speeds. The highest average speeds were recorded over cable and full-fibre services. Cable connections had the biggest increase in their average download speed, rising by 71.3 Mbit/s (36 percent) to 270.6 Mbit/s.

The average download speed delivered by full-fibre connections increased by 1.9 Mbit/s (1 percent) year-on-year to 149.2 Mbit/s.

Network congestion leads to lower download speeds. Average download speeds can slow when broadband networks are busy. This is known as network congestion or contention.

According to the research, across all connections, the average 8-10pm peak-time download speed (67.7 Mbit/s) was 95 percent of the 71.0 Mbit/s average maximum speed – this was up from 94 percent in March 2022.

Similarly, the average daily minimum speed (63.3 Mbit/s) was 89 percent of the average maximum speed, up from 87 percent in March 2022. The effect of network congestion during busy periods was lowest for full-fibre lines.