Broadband in Herefordshire, County of

The fibre league table makes odd reading. WR13 tops it at 79.8 per cent of postcodes, with WR14 on 76.5 and SY8 on 71.5, all comfortably above the national full fibre level of about 69 per cent of premises. Yet HR1 records nothing, and GL17 and GL18 match it at zero. Spread across twenty outward codes, that mix leaves the county-wide figure at 11 per cent.

The broader measures are steadier. Superfast covers 90.6 per cent of postcodes, six points or so under the UK norm, and gigabit-capable services reach 77.7 per cent, which given the thin fibre footprint mostly reflects cable network coverage. At the bottom, 4.1 per cent of postcodes cannot get 10 Mbps. That is one in twenty-four, enough that anyone moving here should treat the slow tail as a live possibility rather than a rounding error.

House hunters can draw one practical lesson from the spread: the outward code matters more than the county average. A WR13 or WR14 address is likely to have a full fibre choice today. An HR1 address is not, though cable or superfast may cover everyday use. And with over 4 per cent of postcodes below 10 Mbps, rural addresses deserve a speed check before contracts are signed.