After recent OFCOM research highlighted the growth of broadband access across rural Britain, a new piece of research has come out which states that rural broadband users experience much slower download speeds than their city counterparts.
UK analyst thinkbroadband.com has revealed the results of a large nationwide broadband test, during which it evaluated over 138,000 connections across 12 regions. The results were a blow to the majority of rural Britain.
The results claim that London is by far the leader when it comes to broadband speeds, with an average download rate of 4.5Mbps. This is followed up by the North East (3.6Mbps), the North West (3.4Mbps) and the East Midlands (3.3Mbps).
However, at the other end of the table came the worst performer, Northern Ireland, which had the slowest speeds in the UK, averaging a dismal 2.3Mbps. Only just above Northern Ireland were Wales (2.6Mbps), the South West and Scotland (both 2.9Mbps).
One of the reasons for the higher speeds in London is that most telephone exchanges have a wide range of LLU (Local Loop Unbundling) operators, whereas other regions do not have nearly as many.
However, when speeds were tested by individual cities rather than by regions, it was Edinburgh who came top of the table with 4.41Mbps, with London in second place with 4.37Mbps.
Despite the positions in the table of each region, there is a wider issue at stake. Although many broadband providers promote their speeds as upwards of 8Mbps, the reality for many customers is that they are a lot lower. Even in London, the speed tests that were carried out found only 20% of download rates over 7Mbps, and in Wales it was a lot less than this. Such results suggest that fast download speeds are, in fact, very hard to come by across the entire country.
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