Average broadband speed in the UK increased by 18% last year, says Ofcom regulator.
The annual report on domestic broadband states that the average domestic speed is now 64 megabits per second (Mbps), compared to 54.2 Mbps the previous year.
The push of 18% is in line with the growth of previous years.
Data for the report was collected in November 2019, but updated with changes during the coronavirus block, when speeds dropped by 2%.
Ofcom says the small drop shows that performance "holds up well" during the pandemic, despite rising demand.
The government started asking people to stay home on March 16th, so the speeds of the last week of March were compared to the beginning of the month.
Virgin Media was the hardest hit, with a speed drop of almost 10% at some point - although the report noted that because Virgin has higher speeds than most suppliers, customers are unlikely to have noticed .
The Ofcom report is compiled by a group of volunteers who measured speeds from their routers and is considered to be a very accurate way of measuring data.
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Superfast connections
The main body of the report, which covers the 2019 data, found that nearly three quarters of UK homes have what Ofcom considers "superfast" broadband packages of 30 Mb or higher.
Connection speeds in the real world are slightly slower, with 69% of people reaching 30 Mbps or more. This includes 17% of homes at 100 Mbps or higher and 3% reaches more than 300 Mbps.
At the lower end, 13% of homes are still on connections of 10 Mbps or less and another 18% have speeds between 10-30 Mbps.
These numbers all refer to the percentage of people who are actually getting those speeds, not how widely available they are. The speeds and packages available for homes still depend on their physical address.
Rural broadband, for example, remains substantially slower than the same technology in urban areas. For example, old-fashioned ADSL connections (Asimmetric digital subscriber line) on copper wire are 36% higher in cities than outside. But the gap between rural and urban connections is narrowing, according to the report.
Ofcom also launched a separate report on the same day on broadband availability: what is offered to homes, rather than what speeds are actually achieved.
Full fiber broadband has increased by a fifth compared to last year, but is still accessible only to 12% of homes. Ultrafast broadband availability (at least 300mpbs) has increased from 2% to 55% of households.