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Report lists UK's best, and worst, five towns for broadband speeds

by Mark Tyson on 3 March 2016, 11:31

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It's always interesting to see the state of play of available broadband speeds in the UK. Today cable.co.uk emailed HEXUS with its latest survey results, detailing the UK's five slowest (and five fastest) towns and villages. Its headlining observations were that the five slowest connected UK towns and villages have worse broadband than the Mount Everest base camp (2Mbps), yet at the other end of the scale Rickmansworth in Hertfordshire boasts an average broadband speed of 77.17Mbps.

Miserden in Gloucestershire, pictured above, has the slowest average broadband speed in the UK. In cable.co.uk's tests over the last 12 months Miserden residents have reported an average broadband download speed of just 1.3Mbps. Nearly a hundred broadband speed tests have been run from this village in the last year with the slowest result being 0.12Mbps.

Completing the bottom five are the village of Ashwell in Hertfordshire (1.39Mbps), market town Ulverston in Cumbria (1.45Mbps), Gilsland village in Cumbria (1.86Mbps) and the village of Brent Knoll in Somerset (1.99Mbps). The residents of these towns and villages are sadly (on average) not receiving the government's minimum guaranteed broadband speeds of 2Mbps.

As mentioned in the intro, Rickmansworth in Hertfordshire (pictured above) is a great location for those who must have the best broadband speeds available. The town's average speed of 77.27Mbps over the last year was topped by at least one user with a speed of 195Mbps. The top broadband speed in Rickmansworth is 1,625 times faster than the worst recorded speed in Miserden.

Completing the speedy top five are Shepshed in Leicestershire (66.34Mbps), followed by Llanwit Major in Glamorgan (66.27Mbps), the market town of Guisborough in Cleveland (61.43Mbps) and the inner city district of Springburn in Glasgow (60.27Mbps).

Dan Howdle, a telecoms expert at Cable.co.uk said that the results show the huge problem of digital inequality in the UK. Being at the losing end of the digital divide is bad for both residents and local economies, says Howdle, suggesting "these often beautiful, scenic locations will become ghost towns," ifthey remain in their "digital black holes".

HEXUS Forums :: 16 Comments

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Posted by Lanky123 - Thu 03 Mar 2016 15:28
Forget the worst speed, it's also depressing that an average of 77Mbps is the very pinnacle of connection speed outside of cities. Is there no lucky village somewhere that's been connected up to FTTH as an experiment? Or that's got fed up with BT and shared a leased line out between themselves?
Posted by shaithis - Thu 03 Mar 2016 15:50
Lanky123
Forget the worst speed, it's also depressing that an average of 77Mbps is the very pinnacle of connection speed outside of cities. Is there no lucky village somewhere that's been connected up to FTTH as an experiment? Or that's got fed up with BT and shared a leased line out between themselves?

As that is the average, I am guessing there are a handful of lucky 160Mps+ households in that dataset.
Posted by Ttaskmaster - Thu 03 Mar 2016 16:18
Ricky gets the highest?
Knackers… I actually used to live there!!!
Darn it, why did I move to where the speed is sub-1Mbps…..? Oh, that's right, I got married… Knackers!!! :lol:

Interesting that, even in Ricky, the difference between lowest and average is massive. I'm guessing it's more Ricky centre and toward Batchworth/Loudwater that has the high stuff and Mill End gets the naff-all…
Posted by FRISH - Thu 03 Mar 2016 16:24
Lanky123
Forget the worst speed, it's also depressing that an average of 77Mbps is the very pinnacle of connection speed outside of cities. Is there no lucky village somewhere that's been connected up to FTTH as an experiment? Or that's got fed up with BT and shared a leased line out between themselves?

Well not everyone needs to pay for higher speeds. I also don't know if the results are accurate or if the results depend on people checking when they likely have problems.
Posted by JCBeastie - Thu 03 Mar 2016 19:45
Lanky123
Forget the worst speed, it's also depressing that an average of 77Mbps is the very pinnacle of connection speed outside of cities. Is there no lucky village somewhere that's been connected up to FTTH as an experiment? Or that's got fed up with BT and shared a leased line out between themselves?

Superfast Cornwall! I have FTTH from BT @ 75Mbps, you can get 300 but at £50 a month, which is more than I wand to spend tbh.

They make a big deal of pushing fibre connectivity in the Southwest but I don't see a single town on these lists (OK there was Somerset but that's still more inland that Cornwall/Devon).

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