If you’re not getting the broadband reliability you think you deserve then there could be a very simple reason why. It appears that some areas of Britain are receiving an almost perfect service whilst other parts of the country are being left in the dark. That’s according to a new study from the team at Broadband Genie, which exposes the best and worst places for annoying outages along with reminding homes about an important rule.

The latest survey asked respondents how many outages they've experienced in the last year, where they live, and who their broadband provider is. Using this information, a reliability score out of 100 was calculated.

So which area has come out on top, and where is the worst place to live if you want a decent connection?

In first place - with a top reliability score of 91.2 - was Gloucester. This location was followed by Wolverhampton (83.1 score), Worcester (80.9) and Oxford (80.6). Other winners include Wrexham (79.1), Norwich (76.4), Leicester (73.8) and Leeds (73.6).

That's good news for consumers living in those areas, but what about the bad broadband? At the other end of charts was Belfast with a dismal reliability rating of just 39.74. London also scored badly (42.21) followed by Glasgow (44.11) and Brighton (49.24).

“It’s pretty shocking that more 15 cities in the UK saw a quarter of broadband customers experiencing broadband outages last year. If this level of service was delivered by other essential utilities, serious questions would be asked.

"For customers, when choosing a broadband provider, reliability is just as important to consider as price, especially if you work from home."

Along with showing which areas are best and worst, Broadband Genie also says it's vital that users check their contracts and claim compensation if things go down.

If your provider is part of Ofcom’s automatic compensation scheme, then you can claim £9.76 a day, but only if you still have no service two working days after reporting the fault.

Here are the providers who currently take part in the scheme:

• BT • EE• Hyperoptic • Plusnet • Sky (including NOW Broadband) • TalkTalk • Utility Warehouse • Virgin Media

Vodafone

Zen Internet

"If you do lose connectivity, make sure you put that claim in, it's your money, and you're entitled to it!"