If you want to stream games, a fast and reliable broadband connection is pretty important. But if you want a fast and reliable broadband connection, you may need to move out of the sticks.

According to new research from price comparison site uSwitch.com, half of UK addresses get broadband speeds above 6.7Mbps, yet a third struggle to achieve 5Mbps.

You can have a good broadband provider and a decent computer, but some poor country dwellers just do not get the speed they want, courtesy of the archaic copper wiring that connects their house to the local exchange.

Slowest of the lot in the uSwitch speed tests was East Sussex village of Winchelsea, where the average speed achieved was a pitiful 1.1Mbps.

Menstrie in Clackmannanshire, Askam in Furness and St Bees, both in Cumbria, and Ripley in Surrey were all found to have an average broadband speed of less than 1.5Mbs.

However, even some city dwellers have relatively low speeds, with computer users in Hereford getting a mere 3.1Mbps. For people in these areas, the roll-out of superfast broadband cannot come fast enough.

"Britain might be riding the wave of a super-fast broadband revolution, but for 49 per cent who get less than the national average broadband speed, the wave isn't causing so much a splash as a ripple," said Julia Stent, director of telecoms at uSwitch.

The government wants to see super-fast broadband in as many homes as possible, in order to fulfil its pledge to make the UK the fastest broadband nation in Europe by 2015.

To this end it has set aside £530 million to help local councils catch up, but it is the work of companies like Virgin that could make the difference, having promised to give ten million UK homes 100Mbps broadband.ADNFCR-1220-ID-801301361-ADNFCR
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