27 Sep 2013

Broadband blackspots: is your internet up to speed?

After further warnings about failures in the government’s rural broadband programme, Channel 4 News put Britain’s internet speed to the test. So how did your area fare?

Whether you’re a farmer in Lincolnshire or a media-savvy Londoner, modern life in 2013 is hugely reliant on the internet.

But the government’s attempt to extend broadband to 90 per cent of the UK has been subject to long delays and rising public costs. And on Thursday, a group of MPs cast further doubt on the programme, saying that taxpayers were being “ripped off”.

The public accounts committee also warned that the final result of a 24 megabytes per second (mbps), for 90 per cent of the UK by 2017, is too little too late – and lagging behind our European counterparts.

So how bad is British broadband? Channel 4 News decided to carry out our own internet poll to test speeds across the UK. We asked readers to click on a link and time how long it took to download this high resolution image. Our highly unscientific poll found a wide variation across the country – and between providers.

The worst speed by a long way was 12 minutes and 22.5 seconds, as recorded by @boredborder in north Lancashire.

The fastest speed recorded was in St George, Bristol, where it took @BristleKRS just nine seconds – about three seconds faster than the computers at Channel 4 News HQ.

Speaking of media outlets, you might expect an impressive super-speed service. But Jonathan Paige tweeted us a fairly poor speed of just one minute, from the Guardian’s multimedia offices.

For a more authoritative assessment of the UK’s broadband performance, Ofcom has put together this map based on 2012 data, and a map showing broadband performance throughout the UK

Here are some of the other results: