The greatest WordPress.com site in all the land! Main Menu Scream if you want to go faster In keeping with the positive afterglow of the Olympics, UK regulator Ofcom has this week released some good news about average UK broadband speeds, announcing a rise from 6Mbps to 9Mbps. Average speeds in the country are now 2.5x faster than they were in 2008 when Ofcom started keeping track, the largest single jump so far. So where's this speed coming from? According to Ofcom, it's not just due to customers choosing to upgrade their connections, but from ISPs improving their networks to deliver faster speeds, "at little or no additional cost to consumers". (Essentially here, we're talking about the move from ADSL to ADSL 2+). The rest of the boost is from 'superfast' connections now offered by UK incumbent BT, and Virgin Media's cable network. Both of these are essentially Fibre-to-the-Curb optical connections, with the former using copper from the cabinet to the home and the latter using coaxial cable. The general ropyness of the former means that the actual speeds you get drop dramatically the further you are from the cabinet, while Virgin speeds tend to hold up better over longer distances. However, BT is said to offer more consistent speeds at peak times and offers higher upload speeds as standard -- 20Mb compared to 10Mb. Virgin wins the overall speed charts with a headline product of 100MB/s with average speeds on this hitting up to 90Mb. BT Infinity, which promises