The seaside town of Bournemouth in Dorset has come top of a new survey into the fastest ten towns and cities in the UK for broadband services. The city, which is also host to a new 100Mbps FTTH fibre optic broadband network being built by i3 Group ( H2O Networks ), achieved an average download speed of 8.06Mbps. This is almost double Ofcom's overall July 2009 national UK average speed of 4.1Mbps.

The Top 10 itself was based on data from over 200,000 anecdotal broadband speed tests, which were carried out over a two month period by comparison website Top 10 Broadband. Edinburgh (6.38Mbps) was the highest placed Scottish city (14th, one ahead of London at 6.63Mbps). Swansea was the fastest Welsh city, at 19th on the list and with average speeds of 6.20Mbps.

1. Bournemouth - 8.06Mbps
2. Portsmouth - 7.82Mbps
3. Dudley - 7.03Mbps
4. Luton - 6.97Mbps
5. Hartlepool - 6.90Mbps
6. Southend-on-Sea - 6.86Mbps
7. Bradford - 6.81Mbps
8. Manchester - 6.77Mbps
9. Birmingham - 6.74Mbps
10. Wolverhampton - 6.72Mbps

It's worth pointing out that Bournemouth's new FTTH broadband network is currently still being developed and still has far too few trial customers to influence its top speed rating. Bournemouth is a fairly competitive market with plenty of access to unbundled LLU ADSL / ADSL2+ broadband ISPs and Cable Modem services.