Evening surfers stole my bandwidth

BE, 02 and Orange are more likely to maintain broadband speeds during peak periods

Research conducted by broadband monitoring experts suggest that most UK broadband users still suffer from slow connections during peak evening hours, though some providers are better than others at dealing with ongoing network capacity problems.

Tests of individual internet service provider (ISP) connections performed at broadband information and comparison site broadband.co.uk show average data speeds remain higher during the day and overnight than during peak evening periods when most people go online.

This is despite the fact that overall average bandwidth on offer is steadily rising, with average download speeds in May 2008 reaching 3.36Mbit/s, up 0.13Mbit/s on April and 0.69Mbit/s compared with November 2007.

"Some suppliers such as BE (owned by the O2 Group), O2 and Orange manage to keep average speeds high across all time periods, suggesting a good level of network capacity, whereas others see their speeds drop quite significantly during the peak periods suggesting that they struggle with capacity," said broadband.co.uk spokesperson Ed Dawson in a statement.