If you live near enough to an exchange for ADSL over BTWholesale's elderly copper wires to be fast or in a big enough town for Virgin/BT to have laid cable/fibre, your net service is pretty good in the UK - from what I hear better than in the US.
If you live further away so Wholesale has no competition from Virgin they don't lay fibre or maintain the last mile and non-town service is (again, purely anecdotally here) worse. Non-town is not rural, it's maybe 3 miles away from an exchange.
If you live further away so Wholesale has no competition from Virgin they don't lay fibre or maintain the last mile and non-town service is (again, purely anecdotally here) worse. Non-town is not rural, it's maybe 3 miles away from an exchange.
London ain't the UK, basically.