Broadband in South Cambridgeshire

Take the three headline figures in turn. Superfast coverage of 95% trails the roughly 97% UK norm by a couple of points, a modest rather than alarming gap. Gigabit-capable availability of 75.8% means three postcodes in four have a fast lane on offer, while the remaining quarter top out lower.

The 1.9% below 10 Mbps deserves more attention than its size suggests. Across 3,995 postcodes that is roughly 75 locations where fixed-line speeds stay in single figures, with little a mainstream package can do about it. The district's 17 outward codes stretch from the CB codes, CB1, CB2 and CB21 among them, to SG7, SG8 and SG19, and a district-level percentage flattens whatever differences exist between them. Treat 95% as the odds, then confirm the address.

The mix suits ordinary households well. At three postcodes in four, gigabit-capable packages give heavy users all the headroom they can spend, and the superfast majority handles everything short of that. The awkward cases are the roughly 75 postcodes below 10 Mbps, where no mainstream deal rescues the experience. For anyone choosing between two properties, that small tail is a better reason to compare postcodes than the averages are.