Netflix Reveals Best UK and Irish ISPs for Streaming

News
By Jane McEntegart
published

How did your ISP do?

Netflix UK has released a list ranking internet service providers (ISPs) in the United Kingdom for streaming TV and movies. The video-on-demand company, which entered the UK market in January of last year, plans to release this type of list once a month.

"These ratings reflect the average performance of all Netflix streams on each ISP," Netflix explained, adding, "The average is well below the peak performance due to many factors including home WiFi, the variety of devices our members use, and the variety of encodes we use to deliver the TV shows and movies we carry. Those factors cancel out when comparing across ISPs, so these relative rankings are a good indicator of the consistent performance typically experienced across all users on an ISP network and a great way to see which ISPs offer the best Netflix experience."

The first list was released last month and placed Virgin, O2, and BT in the top three spots for the UK. How do things look for this month? November's rankings remain unchanged with Virgin, O2, and BT occupying the top spots for the UK. BSkyB, TalkTalk, and EverythingEverywhere bring up the rear in the same order as November, 2012. Even the order for mobile internet providers is the same (Vodafone, O2, Everything Everywhere, 3). It's the Irish market where things have actually changed. November saw UPC, Magnet, and Imagine fill the top three spots. December's rankings saw Digiweb boot Imagine out of third place. This is a big jump for Digiweb, which was in fifth place in November.

The UK's top ISP, Virgin, posted average speeds of 2.16Mbps in December, while Ireland's UPC clocked in at 2.11Mbps.

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Jane McEntegart
13 Comments Comment from the forums
  • goodguy713
    is it just me or is that fairly slow speeds .. kinda makes me wonder what they ISPs here in the united states would do if this type of info was advertised.
    Reply
  • calmstateofmind
    Those are terrible averages. The United States average is just under 7Mbps. South Korea has the highest national average with 17Mbps.

    UK and Ireland aren't doing so well...
    Reply
  • kobez
    UK average broadband speed faster, Ofcom reveals-
    Virgin Media's "up to" 100Mbps service was the fastest, with the research suggesting average actual speeds of 88.3Mbps over a 24-hour period.
    The average download speed on BT Infinity's "up to" 76Mbps service was 58.5Mbps.

    http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-19267090
    Reply
  • kobez
    kobezUK average broadband speed faster, Ofcom reveals-Virgin Media's "up to" 100Mbps service was the fastest, with the research suggesting average actual speeds of 88.3Mbps over a 24-hour period.The average download speed on BT Infinity's "up to" 76Mbps service was 58.5Mbps.http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-19267090kobezUK average broadband speed faster, Ofcom reveals-Virgin Media's "up to" 100Mbps service was the fastest, with the research suggesting average actual speeds of 88.3Mbps over a 24-hour period.The average download speed on BT Infinity's "up to" 76Mbps service was 58.5Mbps.http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-19267090im on virgin 100mb and get 100mb most of the time.
    Reply
  • icemunk
    I would rather slower speeds, and no caps. They can advertise 100+ mbps all they want, but when you have a cap of 200GB per month, you could literally reach the cap in 4.4 hours. Caps are a money grab, and have nothing to do with the actual functionality of the network.
    Reply
  • A Bad Day
    icemunkI would rather slower speeds, and no caps. They can advertise 100+ mbps all they want, but when you have a cap of 200GB per month, you could literally reach the cap in 4.4 hours. Caps are a money grab, and have nothing to do with the actual functionality of the network.
    On the flip side, if the broadband is slower than dialup at times and is terrible for gaming (due to 500 ms ping to a server 50 miles away)...

    (Which is my ISP, which has a monopoly in the area)
    Reply
  • irish_adam
    This kind of thing is so misleading, its all dependant on where you live and how close to the exchange you are. Talk talk did rubbish but infact where i live they actually give you the highest speed, virgin isnt available anywhere near where i live and BT was slow.
    Reply
  • Shin-san
    2.11 mbps is slow compared to what I'm used to. I wonder if they are taking to account average Internet usage, where only the heaviest downloaders continually max out a pipe. This would also be a little sad because while the UK is a larger county, it isn't gigantic. It's about 2.5 times the size of South Korea

    I remember going from 56k to a cable modem, only to reveal that a web server might still be getting 56k speeds because of the server itself.
    Reply
  • blubbey
    Well that's depressing. Here I am getting with 20/2 and supposedly getting a free upgrade to 60/6 (2-2.7MB/s downloads in Steam most of the day) in a town in semi-countryside. What's going on with the rest of the country?
    Reply
  • Are those megabytes or megabits? Because if it's latter, that's pretty damn slow for UK.
    Reply