Canterbury named as the worst UK city for broadband speeds
Canterbury has picked up the wooden spoon for the city with the slowest broadband speeds in the UK.
The historic cathedral city of Kent clocked an average of 34Mbps during testing by Broadband Genie, which is some way short of a standard 250Mbps “ultrafast” connection.
The survey of 265,000 speed tests found a surprise winner; not London or Manchester but Belfast, which logged an impressive 152Mbps average.
That figure put it ahead of other speedy hotspots in Portsmouth, Milton Keynes, and Derry.
However, Belfast isn’t the area with the fastest overall speeds.
That honour went to the Scottish village of Lochwinnoch in Renfrewshire which blazed to an average household speed of over 409Mbps.
Interestingly, the slowest notspot in the UK was in Scotland; the small village of Halkirk in the Scottish Highlands lagged to a paltry 2.8Mbps.
Broadband Genie internet expert, Alex Tofts, urged customers struggling with sluggish speeds to switch to a provider offering a better connection.
He says a sub-par service simply isn’t acceptable at a time when broadband costs are soaring.
Tofts says the biggest providers adhere to Ofcom’s Broadband Speeds Code of Practice and urged customers to hold them to account.
He added: “This means they have to be clear about the speeds you should expect at your address, including a guaranteed minimum they must keep above.”
Overall, the average broadband speed in the UK is 62Mbps, which highlights the scale of the task in upgrading properties to hyperfast connections of 1Gbps or more.
Customers with hyperfast speeds can download an HD movie in just 40 seconds, which will annoy homeowners in Halkirk who frequently have to wait for hours to perform the same task.