Top 10 UK broadband cities revealed

Glasgow has the fastest broadband of all UK cities, according to measurements by Dutch analyst iPing Research.

It measured broadband speeds from the end user perspective with its Nuria measurement tool.

According to iPing, Glasgow has the best broadband connections, offering 2,395Kbps to users while London, previously home of the fastest access, could only offer 1,943Kbps.

Edinburgh came third with 1,918Kbps and Liverpool was fourth at 1,571Kbps.

The research found that Bristol and Leeds have both more then doubled their available bandwidth per user, rising from ninth and tenth position in the last quarter of 2005 to fifth and sixth in the first quarter of 2006.

The other four cities in the top 10 were Birmingham, Bradford, Manchester and Sheffield.

iPing Research CEO René Post said in a statement: "Although speed of broadband connections is on the rise in Europe, some cities are clearly benefiting more from this development than others. On the whole we see that subscribers in smaller cities benefit more from the new technology than the larger conglomerations."

Separately, watchdog Ofcom said it is to investigate the effectiveness of processes which enable consumers to sign up to, and switch between, broadband providers.

As the broadband market matures, suppliers will increasingly seek to attract customers from their competitors and Ofcom wants to make sure that consumers have reliable processes for switching suppliers.