The Top 50 Slowest and Top 10 Fastest UK Streets for Broadband Speed

A new report from uSwitch, which is based on 1,896,977 consumer Internet speedtests conducted during the August 2013 to January 2014 period, claims to have revealed the slowest and fastest streets in the United Kingdom for broadband speed. But we wouldn’t rely on the results.

The study found that Wheatley Road in Corringham (Essex) and Erw Fawr in Henryd (Wales) were the joint slowest with an average download speed of just 0.6Mbps. Meanwhile the fastest, with a score of 57.58Mbps, was Loundes Road in Unstone (Derbyshire).

Overall uSwitch claims that “only 15% of Brits are enjoying broadband of 30Mbps or higher“, which is the speed classified by the EU and Ofcom as “superfast” (note: the UK government still prefers the slower figure of 25Mbps+ for superfast). But take all of this with a huge pinch of salt, as we’ll shortly explain.

The next table shows the 10 fastest streets for broadband in the UK.

As usual such reports do tend to require a rather significant health warning because they frequently fail to take into count the fact that some of the slowest streets might already have access to faster connectivity, although local users may not yet have chosen to adopt it.

Indeed a separate poll of 2,100 people conducted by uSwitch last year found that 47.8% of those covered by superfast connectivity had not taken the service because they said it was still “too expensive” (related packages can attract a premium of roughly £5-£15).

In other cases local users with faster connectivity might not have used the uSwitch test and indeed the slowest streets are also undoubtedly the tiny proportion with no broadband access whatsoever, which wouldn’t show up here because such tests can struggle to even work.

On top of all that there are the usual caveats to remote speedtests. For example, Traffic Management measures, poor home wiring, slow wifi networks and natural fluctuations in performance between congested peak and uncongested off-peak periods can all impact the results.

Some newspapers will no doubt use this report as an excuse to attack the government’s broadband initiatives, although those projects are on-going until 2017 and this report would only have merit for such a task if the availability of faster services was factored in. Not to mention the inclusion of streets with no “reliable” broadband, which would also be helpful.