UK’s worst broadband speeds revealed - is your postcode named and shamed?

If you’ve been tearing your hair out recently because your home Wi-Fi connection is playing up, it might be due to where you live rather than the provider you get your broadband from.

New research has collected data from the 100 most populous towns and cities in the UK to determine the slowest internet speeds in the country, naming the worst areas for connectivity.

According to the numbers totted up by cyber firm FLR Spectron, the worst broadband in Britain can be found in the Welsh town of Wrexham, which has a median average download speed of just 33Mbps, less than half the average national speed of 73Mbps.

Coming in second worst with 36Mbps was Luton, followed by York on 44Mbps, Winchester on 49Mbps and Eastbourne on 50Mbps.

Chichester, Canterbury, Hastings, Havant and Aberdeen were also picked out, rounding off the top ten postcodes with Britain’s slowest connections.

“To put this into perspective, downloading current Netflix hit Adolescence in 4K, for example, would take the average Wrexham user 5 hours and 22 minutes,” said FLR Spectron.

“However, for a streamer in the fastest area, Horsham, it’s just 30 minutes.”

The West Sussex town of Horsham came out on top with an average speed of 352Mbps, which is 11 times faster than the speeds found in Wrexham.

Remarkably, although Hull was the second fastest area, it still 192Mbps slower than Horsham with an average of160Mbps, with Southampton coming in third fastest with 142Mbps.

The study also looked at the most popular providers in the areas, with the majority Wrexham’s population using BT-owned Plusnet to get their broadband piped into homes. Luton, York and Winchester residents predominantly are customers of Virgin Media, BT and TalkTalk plans respectively.

Despite Virgin Media being the main provider in Luton, the research said that 85 percent of the top 20 fastest locations were mainly serviced by Virgin Media.

“As for the ‘slowest’ internet provider, BT accounts for 14 (70 percent) of the 20 slowest locations,” the study said.

But it’s not all doom and gloom. FLR Spectron predicts that by 2027, the UK should see an uptick in internet reliability thanks to the switch off of the old copper wire-based Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN) as Britain moves to fibre-only connections.

“Businesses and homes still relying on the PSTN are encouraged to make the switch before that date, however,” the firm said. “As an ageing and less reliable technology that’s also expensive to maintain, PSTN users may experience issues in the run-up to 2027.”