The average speed of home broadband in the UK is now 12Mbps (megabits per second), according to research from the regulator Ofcom.
The rate has risen by a third since its last report in May 2012 and trebled in the past four years.
However even this rate is slow compared to global competitors.
In the USA the aveage rate is more than double at 27 MPS- which is itself less than a quarte of the speed in Japan and the Netherlands.
Increasingly consumers are upgrading their broadband packages to super-fast services of 30Mbps or above.
The increasing appetite for online video and more devices per household were driving the changes, Ofcom said.
By November 2012, more than three-quarters of the UK’s home broadband users were on packages with advertised speeds above 10Mbps.
HOW SPEEDS HAVE INCREASED
Nov 2008 – 3.6Mbps average
Nov 2009 – 4.1Mbps average
Nov 2010 – 5.2Mbps average
May 2011 – 6.8Mbps average
Nov 2011 – 7.6Mbps average
May 2012 – 9.0Mbps average
Nov 2012 – 12.0Mbps average
The proportion of broadband connections classed as superfast was up to 13%, from 5% the previous year.
Superfast connections are getting faster, with average speeds rising from 35.8Mbps in May 2012 to 44.6Mbps in November 2012.
They are also getting cheaper – customers can upgrade for as little as £5- allbeit with download restrictions, according to Ofcom.
Ed Richards, Ofcom’s chief executive, said “Our research shows that UK consumers are adopting faster broadband packages to cater for their increasing use of bandwidth-heavy services such as video streaming.
“The increase in the average number of connected devices in UK homes is also driving the need for speed,” he said.
The report also looked at upload speeds- which are important to consumers wishing to share large files or use real-time video communications.
The average upload speed was only 1.4Mbps, up from 0.3Mbps average in May.
The strange thing is that we claim that we are getting more and more impatient as a nation- yet we seem to put up with the world wide wait with amazing British stoicism.