The Fastest London Underground Stations and Lines for WiFi

A new study from Uswitch.com claims to have revealed the fastest and slowest stations and train lines on the London Underground for wireless broadband (WiFi) speed. The fastest station was found to be Edgware Road (49.7Mbps), while the slowest was Westminster (0.9Mbps).

At present 260 London Underground stations are covered with WiFi as a result of Virgin Media’s deployment some years ago, which can also be harnessed by customers of O2, Three UK, EE (BT) and Vodafone. Sadly Uswitch doesn’t provide much information to say when their testing occurred or how many tests were conducted in total, but they do confirm that “three speeds were recorded at each Zone 1 station platform and an average was taken to give the overall speed” (this seems like rather a small data sample and with no split for peak and off-peak commuter times).

The research goes on to claim that, overall, London Underground’s free Wi-Fi service provides “faster connections than over 30% of broadband connected homes in the UK.” Apparently this is based off the fact that around 4.4 million lines (Ofcom data) still connect via slow ADSL services, which they say can “only reach speeds of around 8.8Mbps” (oddly this is linked an Ofcom report that gives a peak time average figure of 10.3Mbps for ADSL).

Otherwise 30 of the 99 platforms tested had what is considered to be a “superfast broadband” (24Mbps+) connection.

Top 10 fastest stations

49.7Mbps – Edgware Road
48.3Mbps – Embankment (Northern Line)
41.8Mbps – Charing Cross
40.0Mbps – Lambeth North
38.1Mbps – Paddington (Circle Line)
35.7Mbps – St Pauls
34.1Mbps – Queensway
32.4Mbps – Elephant & Castle
31.3Mbps – Embankment (Circle/District Line)
31.2Mbps – Paddington (Bakerloo Line)

Top 10 slowest stations

0.9Mbps – Westminster
1.3Mbps – High Street Kensington
1.4Mbps – Holborn
1.5Mbps – Gloucester Road
1.6Mbps – Sloane Square
2.0Mbps – Blackfriars
2.3Mbps – Goodge Street
2.4Mbps – St. James’ park
4.1Mbps – Earl’s Court
5.0Mbps – Farringdon

Average Wi-Fi speeds on London Underground lines

24.2Mbps – Bakerloo Line
23.6Mbps – Northern Line
23.0Mbps – Central Line
19.9Mbps – Jubilee Line
19.8Mbps – Hammersmith & City Line
19.7Mbps – Victoria Line
18.7Mbps – Piccadilly Line
17.1Mbps – Metropolitan Line
16.8Mbps – Circle Line
5.6Mbps – District Line

Meanwhile Transport for London (TfL) are currently working with several mobile operators (example) to help pilot a new 4G (mobile broadband and voice) network through tunnels and at station platforms on the London Underground (tube trains).