Virgin Media's fibre optic cable broadband services have won significant praise from a study conducted by Ofcom.

The telecoms industry regulator found that Virgin Media's 'up to 50Mb' package is the fastest available in the UK, managing to deliver average download speeds of 36Mb/s during a single-thread test - a trial which involves downloading one file.

More impressively, it achieved around 46Mb/s speeds during multi-thread testing, in which more than one programme is downloaded at a time. Ofcom explained this is more typical of the activities of heavy internet users.

Ofcom also discovered that Virgin Media's 10Mb and 20Mb offerings were around twice as fast as DSL packages that feature the same headline speed.

"Average speeds have increased which is good news, but there is scope for a further step change in the quality of the UK communications infrastructure," commented Ofcom's chief executive Ed Richards.

Virgin Media's chief executive officer Neil Birkett claimed in a column for the Mirror that most of its broadband customers are able to get at least 90 per cent of their advertised speed.

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