In December ntl upgraded its 3Mb Broadband customers to a new broadband product providing a connection speed of up to 10Mb. At the same time the company increased the usage allowance from 30GB to 75GB and added premium Broadband Plus content (worth £30 per month if bought individually) for free. In January, the company also reduced the price from £37.99 to £34.99.

Some forum users have fed back that the download speeds achieved with their ntl broadband modems are not 10Mb post-upgrade and that speeds vary at different times. It is very difficult to compare like with like, for instance comparing a speed you used to get at one time of the day to a speed you are now getting at peak times . By way of explanation the vast majority of our cable modems are capable of providing up to 10Mb. However, actually reaching 10Mb depends on a number of factors, many of which are outside of ntl’s control including:

• The source and location of the data you are downloading from the Internet and the connection speed of that source, e.g. websites, email, peer to peer, streaming
• The processing power of your PC and whether it is optimised, updated and virus-free
• What else is running on your PC, especially other Internet applications
• USB is a lower capability method of connection than Ethernet, and may be shared with printers, cameras, etc. ntl recommends the use of a 100Mbps Ethernet with its super-fast connections
• Potential congestion on the ntl network at particularly busy times of day

It’s worth noting that getting super-fast speed with ntl over cable is not dependent on you living very close to a telephone exchange, unlike DSL providers. Our new service has, in general, performed extremely well for the vast number of customers, and ntl is still the UK’s fastest broadband ISP by independent verification – see dslreports – keep in mind that the current average speed of 3170 is an aggregate result from our 1, 2, and 10Mb services.