Which UK area have the slowest broadband?
Parts of central London, Stroud, Tunbridge Wells and Canterbury could be among the more surprising areas suffering from the worst broadband in the country, according to new Which? analysis of customer speed tests. Find out more about UK broadband speeds.
While rural areas still have Britain’s slowest average connection speeds, some local authority areas in the capital and other urban centres are also enduring sluggish speeds. The areas with the lowest speeds recorded overall included the Lake District, as well as parts of Scotland and Wales.
Which? found that Allerdale, Argyll and Bute, Ceredigion, Moray, the Orkney islands and the Shetland Islands were the worst affected local authority areas overall. While speeds in Argyll and Bute, Moray and Ceredigion averaged around 7Mbps, the average speed in Orkney was a pitiful 3Mbps.
Broadband users in some of these areas might find it hard to carry out online banking or to use streaming services like Netflix or BBC iPlayer due to slow internet connections. Netflix recommends a speed of 3Mbps for SD quality streaming – but HD quality calls for a recommended speed of 5Mbps.
iPlayer programmes stream at speeds between 1.5Mbps and 5Mbps depending on the quality. With average broadband speeds between 10Mbps and 12Mbps, Canterbury, North East Derbyshire, Stroud, Tower Hamlets, Tunbridge Wells and Westminster were also found to be lagging well behind other areas.
By comparison, mid-table Coventry experienced an average speed of 16.3Mbps. The UK towns with the fastest broadband At the other end of the scale, Which? found that the local authority area with the fastest broadband was commuter borough Broxbourne, Hertfordhsire with an average 32.5Mbps, which is considered superfast by both the Government (over 24Mbps) and Ofcom (over 30Mbps).
Other urban areas benefiting from fast internet include Cambridge, Crawley, Newark and Sherwood, Nottingham, Rushmore, Watford and West Dunbartonshire in Scotland – all had average speeds between 27Mbps and 32Mbps in Which? analysis. uk broadband speeds
