Virgin Media is celebrating after being named the UK's fastest broadband provider for the fourth consecutive month.

The provider, with an average of 6.073Mb, has retained its familiar position at the top of Broadband.co.uk's speed table for the month of December.

Encouragingly, the average broadband connection speed in the UK has risen - by 14 per cent to 3.667Mb.

This represents the first increase since July 2008.

However, Broadband.co.uk's Edd Dawson has stressed that there is still much room for improvement.

He commented: "When comparing download speeds for all providers between various times of day we can see that the average speed drops by over a quarter at peak times showing work still needs to be done to increase capacity to meet demand."

Hot on the heels of Virgin Media is Be/O2 Broadband (5.905Mb), which closed the gap between itself and the leader.