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You may not have noticed, but 'superfast' broadband is available to 94% of Blighty

Fivemiletown, Northern Ireland, ambles at a stately 1.2Mbps

Superfast internet speeds are within reach of nearly 94 per cent of the UK, according to figures compiled by Thinkbroadband.

The research, which covered the three months to September, found that 93.9 per cent of premises in Blighty have access to 24Mbps.

That is an increase from regulator Ofcom's figures, which pegged superfast availability at around 90 per cent, based on a speed analysis from June last year.

The work found that Woking in Surrey has the best speeds of 51.8Mbps, due to it being part of the commuter belt and tech corridor.

Meanwhile, Fivemiletown in Northern Ireland, has the worst speeds of 1.2Mbps. Perhaps the £150m the Democratic Unionist Party earmarked to spend on broadband infrastructure will help address that (out of the £1bn bribe the party secured from Prime Minister Theresa May to prop up her minority government in June).

Average speed take-up in the UK is 16.51Mbps, ranking us at 31st in the world.

But when it comes to pure fibre, the UK lags behind our continental cousins, having recently been ranked the third-worst country in Europe for fibre-to-the-premise (FTTP) coverage.

At the end of June 2016 FTTP coverage in Blighty was 1.8 per cent, the study by IHS Markit found.

On Friday, Openreach released details of how it proposes to introduce a universal service obligation of 10Mpbs, which will cost it between £450m and £600m.

The government is consulting on how it will provide a USO by 2020. However, Openreach's plans lay out the firm's voluntary offer which would connect 98.5 per cent of premises by 2020, rising to 99 per cent by 2022.

The remaining houses will be connected via a fixed-wireless network and satellite services. ®

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