Virgin claims broadband speeds 92% of 'up to' peak

Virgin Media is attempting to gain the moral high ground by publishing what it claims are the real speeds its broadband customers experience.

It has posted an "speed honesty" page on its website listing the "typical" speeds subscribers of its 10, 20 and 50Mb/s broadband packages - sold as L, XL and XXL, respectively - reached during July over any given 24-hour period.

'Typical' in this case means "the speed that at least 66 per cent of our customers get on average in a particular month on a particular product".

The data for the calculations came from "a broadband measurement panel made up of real Virgin Media customers spread out across our network", the company said. It will go on measuring and publishing these figures month on month.

The results: 50Mb/s actually hit 46.2Mb/s, 20Mb/s was 18.3Mb/s, 10Mb/s (L) was 9.5Mb/s and 10Mb/s (M) was 9.3Mb/s.

This with the traffic throttling Virgin applies to BitTorrent users between 4pm and 9pm each day.

VM's move follows Ofcom criticism of broadband suppliers all of whom list speeds with the "up to" caveat but some of whom fail to deliver speeds anywhere near that peak. ®