Broadband Comparison site Broadband.co.uk have released the results of their anecdotal speed tests for January 2009, which sees Virgin Media sitting pretty atop the pile with an average download speed of 6.018Mbps - a speed and position no doubt bolstered by the recent launch of the premium Size: XXL 50Mbps service.

Sitting just behind Virgin in second place is O2, owners of Be Broadband’s ADSL2+ infrastructure, with a top average download speed of 5.319Mbps. Third place is Sky Broadband, with a top downstream average of 3.521Mbps.

The three ISPs offer theoretical maximum download speeds of 50Mbps, 20Mbps (or 24, if you’re with Be) and 16Mbps respectively.

Market leaders BT were nowhere to be seen in the upper echelons of the speed test, lurking second to last with a top average download speed of 2.331Mbps, just about AOL’s 2.011Mbps.

In the upload speed stakes, O2 performed considerably better than Virgin, with a top average of 0.734, well above the cable group’s 0.466Mbps.

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Broadband speeds tests have revealed that Virgin Media now offers the fastest broadband speeds, snatching the crown from rival internet service provider O2 for the first time.

An industry official involved in the testing stated: “Virgin Broadband have finally overtaken O2 broadband as the UK’s fastest average download speed supplier. Data shows that the average download speed for a Virgin user is now 6.13Mbps as compared to 5.32Mbps for O2.”

The report indicates that Virgin Media also came ahead of other high-speed broadband providers, including Be Broadband and Sky Broadband.

Both O2 and Virgin offer high-speed packages of 20Mbps, helping ensure they fared well in speed tests against other providers who do not offer such a service. Virgin Media is likely to perform even better in future speed tests as it carries out plans to roll out its 50Mbps broadband service to a wider area.

Other broadband providers did not fare so well in the speed tests, with AOL and Eclipse Internet yielding the poorest results. AOL also scored worst on the upload speed tests along with TalkTalk, another Carphone Warehouse owned provider. For the month of September, the average download speed for Virgin Media was 6.128Mbps compared to an average speed of 5.321Mbps from Be Broadband and 5.32Mbps from O2.

Eclipse Internet Home and Business Broadband customers can now enjoy maximum download speeds of up to 24Mbps thanks to the recent installation of ADSL2+ hardware across the Eclipse Internet LLU footprint.

All of the Eclipse packages, from Home Lite, to Business Unlimited now feature maximum download speeds of 24Mbps across the board, with varying download limits.

The head of sales and marketing for Eclipse internet, Mark Thomas, said “These new packages represent excellent value for consumers. As well as having access to high speed broadband and the ability to customise the connection, we’ve included additional benefits including everything from free telephone calls to an automated backup service for home computers.

Consumers can select a package based on their usage requirements, from simple surfing to those wanting to use more bandwidth-hungry applications.”

Best of all, this is a free speed upgrade – the cost of the Eclipse packages remains the same as they did when they had the older top speed of 8Mbps.

Broadband provider Be Broadband is offering existing customers ultra-fast downloads for a trial period using a new line-bonding technology that could bring speeds of up to 40Mbps.

The 30-day trial is open to all current Be Broadband customers including a large number of online gamers who are likely to benefit greatly from this speed increase. Participants could receive broadband speeds of up to 40Mbps, although this will verymuch depend on the customer’s current connection speed, as well as the length and quality of the ASDL lines. The faster connection will be achieved by combining two telephone lines via a single ADSL2+ router, harnessing the strength of two lines to get a single broadband connection.

To be considered for the trial, current Be Broadband customers must apply to the ISP before Friday 26th September. Contact Be on 020 7479 5029 or email them at linebondingtrial@beunlimited.co.uk. Be Broadband will then contact BT on behalf of successful applicants to order the two telephone lines. A new router will be given to customers by a Be Broadband employee. Customers who participate in the trial will receive the 30 days free of charge, as well as the following month’s subscription. They may also keep the two lines for a year without charge.

While customers participating in the trial should see their broadband speeds dramatically increase, it is unlikely they will double. Generally a second line will be of a lesser quality than the first that was installed, and in the long run customers are unlikely to see paying for two lots of line rental as value for money, even when speeds go up significantly.

Eclipse Internet has proudly published results showing that the KCOM-owned ISP successfully blocked some 98.2 per cent of spam emails from reaching customers’ inboxes during the month of July – equivalent to over 503 million emails.

Whilst the majority of spam emails which offer you Viagra, cialis and access to offshore African bank accounts left to you in the will of some relative you’ve never heard of are pretty easy to detect, flag and delete, some spam emails are cleverly constructed hoaxes of emails sent from legitimate organisations which would plausibly try to get in contact with you via email – eBay, for example.

All Eclipse Internet packages come with their own branded VIRUSsheild and SPAMsheild security solutions, allowing customers to get set up and surf safely out of the box. As well as identifying and blocking a large proportion of spam before it reaches customers’ mailboxes, the anti-virus/anti-spam solution allows customers to check and delete suspect mail before it can do any damage.

The entry on spam at the website of security experts Symantec says that “messages that do not include your email address in the TO: or CC: fields are common [hallmarks] of Spam,” and therefore should be deleted before opening any attachments which come included.

Clodagh Murphy, Director of Broadband Operations at Eclipse says that “Spam email is a real nuisance and can pose a security threat to customers. Unsolicited email unfortunately is becoming more prolific as internet usage continues to increase. At Eclipse, we try to ease the pain for our customers with our very effective anti-virus/anti-spam solution.”

Karoo, the incumbent ISP in the Kingston Upon Hull areas, whose parent company KCOM owns Eclipse Internet, will be setting up ADSL2+ connections across its entire network over the next two months, providing residents with a much needed boost in broadband speeds.

As Karoo is the only choice of phone and internet service provider in Hull and its surrounding areas, residents have missed out on the competitive prices offered by providers elsewhere in the UK, having been unable to sign up for the triple and quad-play services provided by the likes of Sky, BT, Tiscali and Virgin Media.

Until now, residents of Hull have been unable to sign up for the faster ADSL2+ services which are available to Be Broadband and O2 Broadband punters as well as UK Online subscribers. There are not yet plans in the pipeline to make ADSL2+ speeds – theoretically capable of a maximum downstream speed of 24Mbps – available to Eclipse Internet customers.

BT Broadband have launched a new call-out service that sees broadband customers connecting to the net on a BT line (which could be practically anyone who isn’t on Virgin Media cable or on KCOM’s network) able to ask for a BT engineer to be sent round in order to help declutter and speed up the customer’s connection for a flat fee of £90. If there is no noticeable change in speed, BT promise to refund the charge.

BT are claiming that they can improve speeds of people’s broadband by at least 0.5Mbps (megabits per second), regardless of who provides their internet, so long as it’s provided via a BT line.

Head of BT’s Home IT Support service, Taza Mohammedbhai, said: “Based on our research we are confident that up to 60 per cent of customers could benefit from the Accelerator service. And if customers don’t see at least a 0.5Mbps improvement on speed, we will refund the fee.”

Part of the Accelerator service sees the engineer performing changes that many customers could realistically do for themselves, such as reconnecting their ADSL modem to the master phone socket and reconfiguring browser settings. The service is intended for users who either aren’t quite as tech-savvy as others or are simply too busy to fix things themselves.

No word yet from BT as to whether the service includes the installation of one of those nice Interstitial plates they were talking about in March.

Award winning Eclipse Internet are about to launch a revolutionary new feature for their broadband customers.

The about-to-be-launched Eclipse Control Panel allows users to manage their traffic and optimise specific applications, so if you mainly use the net for email, you can tweak your settings accordingly. The press release from Eclipse claims that connections can be configured in order to optimise “web browsing, email, peer-to-peer, FTP, VPN and gaming.”

“The new services give customers access to the tools to let them do this for themselves, via the Eclipse Control Panel,” says the release. “The view from Eclipse is that customers know better than anyone else what they want from their broadband service, so why not let them control it?”

This news comes on the eve of some price adjustments to the Eclipse residential and business broadband packages – more on this as we get it.

Earlier this week, Downing Street responded to an e-petition which called for the Government to take a leaf out of the Japanese book by financially backing the big telcos in order to roll out a nationwide fibre network. The petition said that “the UK will lag behind in broadband speed if no fibre network isn’t put in place,” attracted just under 1,000 signatures and elicited this response from Number Ten:

“Thank you for the e-petition asking the Government to give BT Government incentive to provide fibre to every UK home. On the 22 February the Government announced a review targeted at areas within the scope of the Government’s influence, and responsibility with the aim of assisting the creation of market conditions that would lead to the a more attractive investment environment for the private sector. This review is due to report in the Autumn.

To date BT’s and other’s investment in broadband technology has meant that over 99% of all businesses and households have access to broadband - the highest ADSL (Asymmetric Digital Subscriber Line) availability of all the G8 countries. As a result we have a very competitive market, which has benefited the consumer through increased choice and some of the lowest prices in Europe. This has been achieved by opening up the previous monopoly to introduce more competition. BT alone can no longer provide broadband to the exclusion of other providers.

Based on the last Broadband wholesale review carried out in 2003/2004, BT and Kingston Communications in the Hull area are currently obliged to provide wholesale broadband access products to other ISPs (Internet Service Provider), which in turn allows them to offer competing retail services. These obligations were necessary to ensure competition for consumers by ensuring that ISPs can access wholesale broadband services to allow them to develop their own competitive retail offerings. Both BT and Kingston meet the requirement and offer a range of wholesale broadband products to meet the needs of ISPs. The market is open to any ISP who wants to take the commercial decision to offer broadband via the incumbents’ network.”

Whilst the response contained a number of home truths, the UK does have the highest availability of ADSL broadband throughout the G8 (although that’s largely due to the fact that the UK is significantly smaller than say, the US or Russia) and some of the lowest prices in Europe, the response neatly avoided giving any concrete response to the question, other than that we should all wait until the Autumn to find out if any kind of government assistance will be given.

We’ve received a number of emails from readers who say they’d happily pay out more in taxes if the government could guarantee FttH to UK homes by a set date, say 2012. Gordon, are you listening?

At last weeks ISPA awards ceremony, Eclipse Internet, the overall winners of the 2007 awards, scooped the titles of Best Business ISP and Best Business Email at the 2008 Internet Service Provider Awards (ISPAs) in London on Friday 14 March.

Mark Thomas, Head of Sales and Marketing at Eclipse had this to say: “Over the last 18 months we have complemented the business-grade broadband access we offer with a range of new services that help businesses to operate more efficiently, including online data back-up, hosting services, hosted applications and e-commerce solutions. We are delighted that our growing reputation as the ISP of choice for businesses has been recognised by the industry through the achievement of not one but two business ISPA awards.”

All of the Eclipse business broadband packages come with no download limits, and provide top download speeds of 8Mbps, with varying levels of IP addresses and webspace; this way smaller businesses who do not require as much space for hosting are not priced out of higher speeds and can enjoy the same level of service as larger outfits.

Eclipse aren’t intending on resting on their laurels. According to Thomas, the plan is to “keep investing in the type of services and the level of customer and technical support that businesses want.” As the commercial broadband market is continually consolidating, the business broadband sector is set to become another hotbed of competition. Tiscali are to branch into the market via Pipex, and both O2 and Sky are offering ADSL2+ services to companies via Be Broadband Pro and UK Online, up against ISP stalwarts Demon
and NamesCo.

The tenth ISPA event, now in its tenth year, recognises innovation and good workplace practice (which is why HMRC were awarded the ISPA equivalent of the Golden Raspberry) in the ISP sector.