How our local broadband pages work
The figures on our local broadband pages come from Ofcom and the census. Coverage (superfast, gigabit, full fibre and decent broadband) is Ofcom's Connected Nations data, current to January 2026. Measured speeds come from Ofcom's postcode speed release of May 2023, the last one Ofcom published by postcode. Who lives in a place comes from the 2021 Census for England, Wales and Northern Ireland and from Scotland's 2022 Census.
Deals are checked every day and each page gives the date of its last check. This page explains the figures once, so each local page can stick to its own place. To find yours, start from broadband in your area.
Ofcom publishes a median download speed for each postcode it measured: half the lines in that postcode were faster and half slower. A place's typical speed is the average of those postcode figures across the place. The UK figure beside it is the same average across every postcode Ofcom measured. The difference between the two is worked out from the rounded figures the page shows. Upload is Ofcom's average upload, the only upload figure we hold by postcode, so we call it the average rather than typical.
Ofcom publishes full fibre for each council, so council and region pages show it. Postcode districts and towns show Ofcom's ultrafast (300 Mbps or more) figure instead, which is not the same thing. Gigabit-capable counts every line that can reach 1 Gbps, full fibre and Virgin Media's cable network alike.
Ofcom's minimum standard for decent broadband is 10 Mbps down and 1 Mbps up. Below decent broadband is the share of premises that can't get it. If you can't get decent broadband, the Universal Service Obligation gives you the right to ask for a better connection.
The two 5G figures differ. “5G availability” is everyday 5G running on the existing 4G core, which is what most phones show. “Next-gen 5G” is standalone 5G: a full 5G network with lower lag, still reaching fewer places.
Ranked by Ofcom complaints per 100,000 customers, fewest first. A down arrow is below the industry average, up is above and a dash means Ofcom publishes no figure for that provider (usually because it is below Ofcom's 1.5% market-share reporting threshold). A small diagonal arrow shows the past-year trend (↘ improving, ↗ getting worse).
The cheapest deal is the lowest cost over the first year, out of the fixed-line deals in the place. The fastest is the highest advertised download speed out of every broadband deal there, the cheaper one on a tie. Best value is the cheapest deal at least 1.3 times faster than the cheapest, with as much speed per pound. Fixed-line means a line to your home: home 5G or 4G and satellite count as broadband but never take the cheapest or best value pick. The full rules are on how we rank deals.
The figures under it come from the deals we list there and from Ofcom.