I defend them a lot. I used to work for them and did my university dissertation on the UK broadband situation. I don't know many things but I do know about this. People have a totally misguided perception of the situation in Hull in particular.
An article like this pops up every couple of months. They're always incredibly vague and focus on one particular statistic with no info on there methodology, so it's hard to tell how they've actually arrived at these figures.
It seems this article is looking at the percentage of connections under 10Mbps in each constituency. We don't have the figures for the other local constituencies though. Its impossible to say much about this study since the article says so little about it, but I do know that the majority of KCOM's network now has access to a Fibre to the Premises service. Elsewhere in the country this kind of service is very rare, but it's the gold standard. You can't get the really good speeds on a copper phone line (which is what is used almost everywhere else) and over time, getting those really good speeds will be more and more important.
The fastest internet connections in the country are fitted in Hull as standard and before very long everywhere in Hull and East Yorkshire will have it. I guess there's a chance that the vast majority of streets in Hull which don't have lightstream yet are in the Eastern constituency.
It's not the case that the vast majority of homes which don't have lightstream is East Hull. There is no lightstream in North Hull, Sutton Park and Bransholme being the largest areas which do not currently have it, which I find amazing when they deliver already to Woodmansy!