The Top 391 Fastest and Slowest UK Local Areas by Broadband Speed

Consumer magazine Which? has used data from its broadband ISP speedtest to both identify some of the UK’s fastest local authority areas for average download speed (Broxbourne on 32.5Mbps) and some of its slowest “black spots” (Orkney islands on 3Mbps) for 2019. But network availability may tell a different story.

The 2019 study is said to be based on data from 277,575 consumer speedtests (the speeds presented are median values), which were conducted via Which?’s own broadband speed checker in the year to 30th September 2018. However it’s unclear whether the magazine has included or excluded mobile data (3G / 4G) and enterprise (business) lines from their study.

Overall the study found that the top slowest local authority areas were the Scottish Orkney Islands (3Mbps), Allerdale (5.7Mbps) and the Shetland Islands (6.7Mbps). Meanwhile the fastest areas were named as Broxbourne (32.5Mbps), Crawley (32.3Mbps) and Newark & Sherwood (30Mbps).

In response Which? says that consumers “face a lottery when it comes to broadband connectivity” and that “residents in 15 UK local authority” are “failing to access” a minimum speed of 10Mbps, which is the starting point for the Government’s forthcoming new Universal Service Obligation (USO) that is due to be begin later this year.

Alex Neill, Which? MD of Home Products and Services, said:

“Having a good broadband connection is a basic requirement for many important everyday tasks, so it is unacceptable that millions of people around the country are still struggling to get what they need.

The Government and the regulator must now press ahead with plans to provide a bare minimum connection speed of 10 Megabits in every household and make sure that no one is at a disadvantage because of where they live.”

Happily Which? have correctly noted that the main problem is with how “many people were still not taking up the fastest service available in their area.” Ofcom’s latest Connected Nations 2018 report found that take-up of 30Mbps+ “superfast broadband” services stood at 45% (up from 38% in 2017 and 31% in 2016), but this is below the current national availability of such networks.

At present the Government’s £1.6bn (public funding commitment) Broadband Delivery UK project has already helped to extend “superfast” broadband to more than 95% of UK premises and this could reach 98% by the end of 2020. We should point out that this is a national average and the figure will vary by area. Meanwhile the 10Mbps USO is intended to help the final c.2% of largely remote rural premises.

Clearly a lot of areas have a high availability of so-called “superfast broadband” and thus you might well expect their overall results to be better, but then not everybody chooses to upgrade. Indeed it usually takes several years of natural migration before the majority in any given area have adopted the new services.

A number of factors can impact take-up in this way, such as the higher prices for related “fibre” services, as well as customers being locked into long contracts with their existing ISP (can’t upgrade yet) and a lack of general awareness (locals don’t always know that the faster service exists) or interest in the new connectivity (if you have a decent ADSL2+ speed and only basic needs then you might feel less inclined to upgrade).

The fear of switching to a different ISP may also obstruct some services. In other cases the new service may run out of capacity (i.e. demand is higher than expected), which means that people who want to upgrade are prevented from doing so until Openreach resolves the problem, although the scale of this issue is fairly small.

On top of that the speedtest themselves don’t tell the whole story, not least because they can be agressively affected by other factors like slow WiFi, local network congestion, local traffic management systems and software / configuration errors. In short, studies like this don’t accurately reflect the availability of faster networks. Take with a pinch of salt.

Andrew Glover, Chair of the ISP Association (ISPA), said:

“ISPs have made significant progress in boosting broadband speeds in recent years, as Ofcom’s official figures show that across the UK, average download speeds have increased by 28% over the past year to 46.2Mbps.

The data used by Which? appears to be gathered from customer speed tests and therefore may not be fully representative of speeds available. Ofcom’s Boost Your Broadband campaign can show where faster connections are already available should customers want them, including some of the areas mentioned in the report.

Whilst some of this progress is highlighted by Which?, the report does indicate that there is still work to be done to ensure that no area in the UK is left behind. ISPA’s members are working hard to deliver quality broadband services to consumers across the UK, and are committed to rolling out the next generation of broadband infrastructure and services to those that need it. There are also a wide variety of new ISPs breaking into the industry to deliver new and innovative solutions.

For those in true ‘not-spots’ the Broadband USO is due to be implemented by Ofcom in 2019, which will give everyone the legal right to request a 10Mbps connection.”

We’ve published the full results below and ordered the table by median (average) speed, starting from the fastest and going to the slowest at the bottom. For those who don’t know, the median is the middle point of a number set, in which half the numbers are above the median and half are below.