Broadband in West Lothian

Both ends of the speed spectrum are busy here. On the fibre side the district performs strongly: 83.9% of West Lothian's 4,140 postcodes have full fibre, EH30 records a perfect 100%, and EH47 and EH48 follow at 92.6 and 86.1 per cent. Gigabit availability of 84.1% tracks the fibre figure almost exactly. Set against the national picture, where around 69% of premises are passed, this is a well-built district.

The complication is what the averages leave behind. FK1, ML11 and ML7 all show zero full fibre in the dataset, and 7.7% of postcodes cannot reach 10 Mbps, a heavier slow tail than the headline coverage would suggest. Superfast availability of 96.1% sits near the UK norm of about 97%, so the middle of the market holds up. But West Lothian is a district where the outward code matters enormously. An EH30 postcode and an ML7 postcode inhabit different broadband worlds while sharing one set of averages.

For most households the fibre numbers translate into genuine choice, with 84.1% of postcodes able to order gigabit packages and full fibre nearly ubiquitous in the best-served codes. The 7.7% below 10 Mbps is the group to worry about. Anyone moving into the FK or ML outward codes in particular should verify what a specific postcode can get, since those codes record no full fibre at all.