‘Boro and Belfast have faster broadband than London, Hull bottom

Hull has the slowest broadband of any major UK town or city according to figures from uSwitch, which found Middlesbrough had the best speeds.

According to more than 500,000 speed tests, conducted over a six month period, just 22 towns and cities have average speeds of more than 24Mbps – a number which does not count London or Edinburgh.

Middlesbrough’s average of 34.46mbps beat Belfast (34.34mbps) and Brighton (33.8mbps) into second and third places, while Hull’s 12.42mbps was comfortably the worst of the 42 towns and cities tested.

Aberdeen was the second slowest with 15.67mbps, with Milton Keynes betraying its status as a modern town with just 17.1mbps.

Of greater concern was the fact that 30 percent of users can’t get speeds greater than 5mbps and just 10 percent get above 10mbps. Ofcom claims the UK average broadband speed rose by 27 percent from 22.8mbps to 28.9mbps in 2015 as coverage and adoption of superfast broadband accelerated.

BT claims the Openreach fibre network now reaches 90 percent of UK premises and the government has set itself a target of 95 percent superfast broadband coverage by the end of 2017, with significant amounts of public money handed out through the Broadband Delivery UK (BDUK) initiative.

uSwitch says its figures suggest adoption of fibre has been sluggish. “The UK’s cities should be leading the charge when it comes to broadband speeds, yet just 22 cities have broadband users with average speeds of more than 24mbps,” said Ewan Taylor-Gibson, broadband expert at uSwitch.

“With capital cities like London and Edinburgh not on that list, we should be asking what more can be done to encourage the adoption of superfast broadband now it’s so widely available. Our data suggests take up isn’t high enough – even in our biggest cities. With fibre ever more available, home broadband users need to know it’s there, and it needs to be priced right too.”