Parts of central London, Stroud, Tunbridge Wells and Canterbury were among the more surprising areas suffering from the worst broadband in the country according to new Which? analysis of customer speed tests.
The consumer champion found that while rural Scotland and Wales still have Britain’s slowest average connection speeds, many local authority areas including in the capital and other urban areas are also enduring sluggish speeds.
Some of the slowest average internet speeds were recorded in the heart of London’s financial district, the City of London (9.9Mbps), the nation’s political nerve centre, Westminster (10.8Mbps) and Coastal Suffolk (10.4 Mbps).
By comparison, mid-table Coventry experienced an average speed more than 50 per cent faster – at 16.3Mbps.
Areas with the lowest speeds recorded overall included the Lake District, as well as parts of Scotland and Wales.
The Orkney islands (3Mbps), Allerdale (5.7Mbps), Shetland Islands (6.7Mbps), Argyll and Bute (7Mbps), Moray (7.1Mbps) and Ceredigion (7.5 Mbps) were the worst affected local authority areas.
Broadband users in some of these areas might find it hard to carry out online banking or to use streaming services like Netflix or BBC iPlayer due to slow internet.
Tower Hamlets (10.1Mbps), Stroud (11.4Mbps), Tunbridge Wells (11.4Mbps), Canterbury (11.5Mbps) and Southwark (12.2Mbps) were also found to be lagging well behind other areas.
At the other end of the scale, Which? found that the fastest local authority for broadband speeds was commuter borough Broxbourne with an average 32.5Mbps, which is considered superfast by both the Government (over 24Mbps) and Ofcom (over 30Mbps).
To put this into context, this means that downloading a film in Canterbury will take around three times longer than it would in Broxbourne.
Other urban areas benefiting from fast internet include Crawley (32.3Mbps), West Dunbartonshire in Scotland (29.6Mbps), Watford (29.5Mbps), Rushmore (28.9 Mbps), Nottingham (27.6Mbps) and Cambridge (27.3Mbps).
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