NORTHERN Ireland had the fastest broadband download speed in the UK on average in the first half of 2022, according to a new report.
Ookla, the US company behind one of the internet’s most popular performance web services Speedtest.net, found the median download speed in the north was 65.21 Mbps (megabytes per second).
The tech firm’s new Speedtest Intelligence report put Northern Ireland ahead of England (62.4 Mbps), Scotland (57.13 Mbps) and Wales (49.71 Mbps) for the first six months of this year.
The median upload speed in the north (18.67 Mbps) also outranked the three GB countries.
However, fixed line broadband was on average slightly slower, at 61.69 Mbps in Northern Ireland, with the median upload at 17.63 Mbps.
Ookla said while seven large internet service providers (ISPs) dominate the UK fixed broadband market, the landscape is becoming increasingly competitive in some places.
The report found Fibrus had the fastest median download speed in four counties of Northern Ireland.
It’s two years since the company was awarded the £165 million Project Stratum government contract to roll out full fibre connectivity to 76,000 premises in the north.
An additional £32m was later awarded to include another 8,500 harder to reach premises.
In addition to the publicly funded scheme, Fibrus earlier this year secured around £220m in finance from a consortium of banks to fund its goal of connecting around 330,000 premises in total.
Fibrus said it had reached 100,000 premises by the end of 2021, with around 20 per cent of those premises falling under the remit of Project Stratum.
The company’s co-founder and chief executive, Dominic Kearns said; “Our position on the list – right next to larger competitors - is something we’re immensely proud of, given that we’re a relatively young company that was born during the Covid pandemic.”
