A new study into the state of Britain’s broadband has found that about 100,000 people nationwide are still unable to purchase anywhere near the fastest possible speeds. The team at Broadband Savvy has mapped the entire country’s internet performance to highlight and visualise broadband dead spots.
Data from the regulator, Ofcom, shows 48,000 UK premises can only be served with broadband connections Broadband Savvy describes as “unusably slow”.
The firm counts this as any connection below 10Mbps, which is barely enough bandwidth to reliably stream Netflix.
According to the government’s universal service obligation promise, everyone in the UK has the right to a minimum level of broadband service, which is 10Mbps download speeds and 1Mbps upload speeds. This new study shows those areas in which Brits are not being serviced their minimum requirements.
By totting up the figures from every area in the UK, the new map (below) shows the worst dead spots for broadband across Britain. The darker the red colour, the higher proportion of people in that area cannot get a download speed of at least 10Mbps in their home or business.
“People in rural areas are being left behind by Project Gigabit,” said Tom Paton, founder of Broadband Savvy.
Project Gigabit was set up in 2021 and aims to provide “hard to reach communities” with gigabit speed broadband, which is 1,000Mbps (1Gbps) by 2030.
“The government needs to do more to provide basic broadband service in areas where it is not commercially viable to do so, whether using fixed fibre or fixed wireless internet.”
The study broke down the data into census areas, the smallest possible geographic unit that’s reported in census data. It’s bad news if you are one of the two premises owners in Cleobury Mortimer in Shropshire in the West Midlands – neither of you can get internet above 10Mbps, and you count as the worst broadband in the country by census area.
That’s followed closely by Forres, Moray, Scotland, where 51 of the 53 premises can’t receive internet above that speed.
“Many rural communities around the UK are still stuck with super slow broadband at the moment,” said Paton.
“While 86 percent of UK homes can now get ultrafast gigabit internet, we estimate around 100,000 people have been left behind, with no idea when they will get usable broadband at their address.
“The remote regions of Scotland and Wales are by far the worst places for broadband in the UK. If you live somewhere like the Shetland Islands, your best bet to get decent internet is to use a satellite service like Starlink.”
Zooming out for a wider view, the worst local authority in the UK for broadband is the Orkney Islands in Scotland, with 385 of its 11,920 premises with broadband below 10Mbps. On this larger scale, that’s only 3.23 percent of residents. The Shetland Islands are the second worst with 2,38 percent, with Powys, Wales not far behind on 2.18 percent.
In fact, Wales was the worst nation overall in the study, with 1 in 244 premises only able to get below 10Mbps, which is 0.41 percent of the population. 0.36 percent of Scots are stuck with the sluggish speeds, compared to 0.21 percent of Northern Irelanders. England had the best result, with only 0.09 percent – 1 in 1,111 – premises below 10Mbps.
