Digital divide: Broadband far faster in town than country

It found access in rural areas was worse than towns, which was put down to lack of cable and long telephone lines - which make broadband less likely to run at high speeds, if at all.

Andrew Ferguson, editor of thinkbroadband.com, said the results showed there was still a digital divide between urban and rural areas.

Broadband is slower in rural areas, which means it takes longer to download information from the internet

He said: "Ofcom say the digital divide doesn't exist. In terms of people wanting broadband and being able to get it, it would seem the divide has been removed.

"But divide does exist in broadband speeds - those in dense urban areas and those in rural areas."

Broadband advice website thinkbroadband.com recorded average speeds across 12 UK regions, by testing more than 138,000 connections of registered users of its site. It found the average speed in the UK was 3,238Kbps.

In London the average download speed was 4,460kbps. Northern Ireland was the slowest UK region with an average speed of 2,258kbps.

In Wales the average speed was 2,587kbps and in Scotland the average connection was 2,876kbps.

Mr Ferguson said broadband services using DSL technology, rather than cable technology as provided by companies such as Virgin Media, will be affected by the distance from the nearest telephone exchange. But he added the line length problems could be solved.

 "The technology exists and it's out there. The problem is it costs money and we don't want to pay a lot for our broadband connection," he said.

"No-one wants to spend the money, including us as consumers and right through to big groups including BT."

AVERAGE BROADBAND SPEEDS

LONDON: 4460 Kbps

NORTH EAST: 3594 Kbps

NORTH WEST: 3393 Kbps

EAST MIDLANDS: 3275 Kbps

SOUTH EAST: 3253 Kbps

YORKSHIRE & HUMBERSIDE: 3204 Kbps

WEST MIDLANDS: 3193 Kbps

EAST: 3090 Kbps

SCOTLAND: 2876 Kbps

SOUTH WEST: 2869 Kbps

WALES: 2587 Kbps

NORTHERN IRELAND: 2258 Kbps