When it comes to the broadband superhighway, one village in Kent
doesn't even make the slip road.

In fact sleepy Farningham has been singled out as having the slowest internet speeds in the UK!

In a study by broadband comparison site Top10.com, the picture postcard village notches up speeds of a paltry 1.30Mb.

That means it would take a staggering 12 hours to download just
one movie from the web in Farningham!

That compares with some UK broadband providers who offer speeds
of up to 24Mb - and Liverpool as an area, which has an average
7.72Mbps.

Farningham's broadband speeds are so slow, according to the
survey, even a remote Scottish border town called Duns and a small
village in the Rhondda valleys of Wales called Pentre have faster
internet speeds.

The results were based on nearly 100,000 speed test taken across
the UK between August and October.

Alex Buttle, Director of Top10.com, said: "We made sure there
were at least 50 tests on each postcode area so although many of
the low broadband speeds did come out in the north, especially in
places like the borders around Scotland, in actual fact Farningham
did come out to be the worst. It was a surprise to us as much as
anyone else."

"We don't have access to information about BT's exchange level
information, so no I wouldn't know precisely why that was.

"There are anomalies with broadband speed such as this one that,
for whatever reason, the infrastructure just meant that the
broadband speeds just aren't there around Farningham".

Abdul J'bair, manager of the Lion Hotel in Farningham, said he
was shocked at the village's ranking: "It surprises me as I have no
problems here at all, at the hotel. I have never had any problems
with it at all."