Sunderland is best known for Nissan, football, and possibly call centres, but it has now been revealed as the best-connected city in Britain.

The northeastern city has the highest percentage of homes with broadband as well as digital television, according to statistics from Ofcom.

The telecoms regulator found that 66 per cent of households in Sunderland have a broadband connection, compared with the national average of 57 per cent, a figure that has risen by 12 per cent since 2006. It also has 96 per cent uptake of digital TV, well above the average of 85 per cent.

Meanwhile, Glasgow languishes at the bottom of the broadband league with just 32 per cent penetration, but 95 per cent of households have digital television.

The data is published in Ofcom’s annual communications market report, which shows figures for each city for the first time, as well as by region.

The results paint a picture of changes in how people use new technologies, in turn reflecting social patterns.

Sunderland has been building itself up as an IT hub, starting in the 1990s with the city’s telematics strategy, which ran until 2003. It set the foundations for transforming Sunderland’s traditional industries of shipbuilding and coalmining to technology-based companies, many of which are based at the Rainton Bridge business park.

The city council’s digital challenge programme, launched last year, aims to get more people in the city online. All libraries offer internet access and the council has opened so-called community “electronic village halls”, which also let people log on to the net.

The Ofcom report also reveals that for the first time, the proportion of homes in rural areas with broadband — 59 per cent — has outstripped that in urban areas, which is 57 per cent.

Ed Richards, Ofcom chief executive, said: “The report highlights a closing of the geographic digital divide in the UK.”

There are now 14.25 million homes with broadband in the UK, out of a total of 25 million households.

Of those who do not have broadband, only 1 per cent now say is it is because they cannot access it. The main reasons are now because people do not want it or they cannot afford it.

Ofcom said one of the factors boosting broadband uptake in the countryside is online shopping. Three quarters of rural internet users making online transactions, compared with 69 per cent for the UK as a whole.

Dr Victoria Nash, policy and research officer at the Oxford Internet Institute, said: “Income, age and level of education might well be a cause for the discrepancy. High levels of unemployment could also have an impact in towns such as Glasgow. Diminished local services in rural areas might mean the online environment becomes more important.”

She said reasons for higher uptake in rural areas could also be due to more people working from home, driven by an increasingly green culture and the rising price of petrol.

The English spend more time on the internet than anyone else in the UK, with 77 per cent of their time online spent sending emails and instant messages and visiting chatrooms. The Welsh watch more satellite television than the rest of the UK with 79 per cent taking a satellite service compared with an average 65 per cent across the UK.

Ofcom found that take-up of digital television has reached 85 per cent of homes, up 10 per cent since 2006.

Meanwhile, Ofcom said yesterday that it would deregulate almost 70 per cent of the wholesale broadband market because there was sufficient competition in these areas.

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