Halifax UK Find the South East is the Best Rural Place to Live for Broadband

The 2013 Halifax Rural Areas Quality of Life Survey has reported that residents of Waverley in Surrey (England, UK) have the best quality of life of any rural area in Great Britain. More generally the South East was found to have the highest level of households with access to “fast broadband“.

The study itself uses data from various sources (e.g. Point Topic and DEFRA) to measures local aspects such as life expectancy, healthcare, personal wealth, income, employment rates, house prices, traffic flow and various other things in order to reach its conclusions. Broadband was just one of its measures but that’s the one we’re going to focus upon.

As usual Halifax’s definition of “good” or simply “fast” broadband remains defined by any area that can deliver internet speeds of greater than 2Mbps (Megabits per second), which is perhaps not the same gauge as many ordinary consumers would use (2Mbps is somewhat of a low bar to set).

Overall Halifax’s study found that the rural areas with the highest level of households with access to “fast broadband” were Chiltern (94.6%), Mid Sussex (94.1%) and Thanet (92.4%) in the South East. The first two also placed highly in the banking groups overall top 50, with Chiltern sitting in 4th place and Mid Sussex at 12th.

It should be said that 2Mbps is the minimum gauge here and some of the related areas will still have access to superfast broadband (25Mbps+) connectivity. Credits to Thinkbroadband for spotting this report, which was released at the end of March 2013.

The Halifax Rural Areas Quality of Life Survey (PDF)
http://www.lloydsbankinggroup.com/media/pdfs/halifax/2013/2903_Rural.pdf