Average UK broadband speed surpasses 4 Mbps

The average broadband speed being experienced by consumers in the UK has now passed 4 Mbps, new statistics reveal.

According to a monthly speed test for April by Broadband.co.uk, British homes and businesses received an average speed of 4.137 Mbps.

Despite this marking a significant improvement on the 3.2 Mbps average speed experienced in April 2008, the website also reported a major increase in user complaints.

Broadband.co.uk's Ed Dawson pointed out that "far more rich media is being consumed" over the internet compared to a few years ago.

"It seems that as fast as [internet service providers can] add capacity, they still don't manage to keep up with their customers' expectations," he said.

"So although we should congratulate the industry for continuing to move forward we must not allow them to rest on their laurels."

The report also revealed that Virgin Media offered the fastest average speeds of all providers for the seventh month in a row.

In related news, Computer Weekly has reported a survey by the Communications Consumer Panel as revealing that a large proportion of the UK population supports the government's pledge to provide broadband of a minimum speed of 2Mbps to every household by 2012.