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The UK Broadband Divide: 123 Towns Compared

The fastest, slowest, and cheapest towns for broadband in Britain — ranked from the same independent data we publish on every Switchity town page.

123 UK towns
ThinkBroadband Labs + Switchity deal data
Updated May 2026
Fastest town
Dagenham
430Mbps
103% above the UK average
View Dagenham breakdown →
Slowest town
Eastbourne
96Mbps
55% below the UK average
View Eastbourne breakdown →
Cheapest starting price
Basildon
£14/mo
Deals from £14.00
View Basildon breakdown →

UK broadband infrastructure by country

How the four UK countries compare on the three gigabit-capable infrastructure networks plus average speed. Click a country name to verify the figures on ThinkBroadband Labs. Sort the chart by any metric to surface a different angle — Altnet FTTP shows which countries are leaning hardest on disruptor networks for fibre rollout.

Source: ThinkBroadband Labs · captured 2026-05-28
Northern Ireland
957,788 premises
Gigabit
97.3%
Openreach FTTP
91.5%
Altnet FTTP
42.4%
Virgin Media
51.5%
Avg Speed
198 Mbps
England
27,844,035 premises
Gigabit
91.1%
Openreach FTTP
67.3%
Altnet FTTP
48.7%
Virgin Media
59.3%
Avg Speed
189 Mbps
Wales
1,643,524 premises
Gigabit
88.3%
Openreach FTTP
81.7%
Altnet FTTP
21.9%
Virgin Media
37.0%
Avg Speed
169 Mbps
Scotland
2,937,796 premises
Gigabit
86.0%
Openreach FTTP
61.6%
Altnet FTTP
35.3%
Virgin Media
53.0%
Avg Speed
177 Mbps

Drill in: speed vs full-fibre across 123 UK towns

Each dot is a town. Higher up = faster average broadband. Further right = more of the town wired with full fibre (FTTP). Colour codes the macro-region. Filter by county to narrow into a specific area. Hover or tap any dot for the full breakdown; click to pin it open.

South
Midlands
North
Scotland
Wales
Northern Ireland
Showing 123 towns
05010015020025030035040045030%40%50%60%70%80%90%100%Full-fibre (FTTP) coverage (%)Average download speed (Mbps)

Top 10 fastest towns

Ranked by average residential download speed (Ofcom + ThinkBroadband Labs).

#TownCountyAvg speedGigabit %From £/mo
1DagenhamGreater London430Mbps97%£14.00
2NottinghamNottinghamshire328Mbps96%£14.00
3PortsmouthHampshire316Mbps97%£18.99
4LutonBedfordshire306Mbps98%£14.00
5GillinghamKent299Mbps97%£14.00
6Milton KeynesBuckinghamshire297Mbps96%£14.00
7WolverhamptonWest Midlands292Mbps97%£14.00
8Grays ThurrockEssex290Mbps94%£18.99
9LeicesterLeicestershire282Mbps97%£14.00
10CambridgeCambridgeshire281Mbps96%£14.00

10 slowest towns

Average broadband speed lags here — usually a mix of older copper and patchy altnet rollout.

#TownCountyAvg speedGigabit %From £/mo
1EastbourneEast Sussex96Mbps89%£14.00
2CornwallCornwall104Mbps72%£14.00
3MendipSomerset107Mbps81%£23.00
4WestminsterGreater London110Mbps88%£14.00
5SouthportMerseyside131Mbps78%£14.00
6Brighton and HoveEast Sussex136Mbps92%£14.00
7BathSomerset139Mbps80%£14.00
8High WycombeBuckinghamshire144Mbps82%£14.00
9HalifaxWest Yorkshire146Mbps93%£14.00
10CanterburyKent147Mbps81%£14.00

Browse all 123 towns by county

Every Switchity town page links from here. Tap any town for its full broadband breakdown — providers, speeds, prices, and coverage.

Aberdeenshire1
Bedfordshire2
Berkshire2
Bristol1
Buckinghamshire2
Cambridgeshire2
Cheshire3
City of Edinburgh1
City of Glasgow1
Cornwall1
County Durham1
Derbyshire2
Devon2
Dorset2
Dundee City1
East Sussex3
Essex5
Glamorgan1
Gloucestershire2
Greater London11
Greater Manchester6
Gwent1
Hampshire3
Hertfordshire3
Kent3
Lancashire4
Leicestershire1
Lincolnshire3
Merseyside4
Norfolk1
North Somerset1
North Yorkshire3
Northamptonshire2
Northern Ireland3
Nottinghamshire2
Oxfordshire1
Shropshire2
Somerset2
South Glamorgan1
South Yorkshire3
Staffordshire5
Suffolk1
Tyne and Wear2
Warwickshire2
West Midlands7
West Sussex2
West Yorkshire4
Wiltshire1
Worcestershire4

Methodology

What we measured. For each of the 123towns covered by Switchity's area pages, we recorded the average residential download speed and the cheapest starting price across all broadband deals available at the town's canonical postcode.

Sources.Speeds come from ThinkBroadband Labs' ongoing UK speed-test sample (linked to the relevant labs page from every Switchity town guide). Pricing comes from our live broadband-deal feed via Stickee, the affiliate partner that powers our comparison tools. Both data sources are dated per town — see the source_date column in the CSV.

Exclusions.Towns missing either a measured average speed or a published starting price are filtered out so league tables don't show 0 Mbps or £0. Business-only deals and social tariffs are also excluded; we report the consumer mix that's available to a typical UK household.

Last updated. May 2026. The underlying data refreshes on the same schedule as our individual town pages, so any change at a town level surfaces here within an hour.

Dataset

Download all 123 towns (CSV)

Includes town, county, average speed, gigabit %, starting price, and a backlink to each town's breakdown.

Download CSV

Licensed under CC-BY 4.0. Free to reuse with attribution to Switchity (and a link back to this page where possible).

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