Top 10 UK Fastest and Slowest Streets for Broadband in 2023

A new study from Broadband Genie (BG) has analysed 265,000 consumer speed tests and found the top slowest and fastest ten streets for broadband in the UK. For example, Morriston Close in Watford (London) comes out as the slowest street, with an average download speed of 0.6Mbps, but this is only half of the story.

According to Ofcom’s latest data (here), some 52% (15.4m) of UK homes are currently within reach of a Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) network (up from 48% in Jan 2023) and this rises to 75% for gigabit-capable networks (up from 73%). Similarly, some 97% of premises should be within reach of a fixed “superfast broadband” (30Mbps+) network.

However, the new study, which seems to clone what Uswitch often does, is based on consumer speedtests. This is a problem because such reports don’t correctly reflect the underlying availability of faster networks and are thus more a reflection of consumer take-up. The report does acknowledge this and highlights how Morriston Close – supposedly the UK’s slowest street – is also covered by Virgin Media’s 1Gbps capable broadband network (i.e. none of those who ran tests had taken that).

In fact, BG notes that all of the 10 slowest streets listed below have access to speeds of at least 30Mbps and 8 out of 10 even have access to speeds of 300Mbps+. Only Wade Court, Cheltenham and Cefn Road, Bridgend (Wales) don’t have access to speeds above 300Mbps. Suffice to say, consumer awareness and adoption of faster packages remains a key issue.

In other cases, consumers may be aware that a faster service exists, but they have simply chosen not to upgrade due to various issues, such as the potentially higher price, lack of support for the new network by their existing ISP, fear of switching, being stuck in a long contract term or a simple lack of need / desire for anything faster.

Speed test based like this can also be influenced by other factors, such as poor home wiring, the user’s choice of package (e.g. 1Gbps could be available, but people may pick a slower tier to save money), local (home) network congestion and slow WiFi performance etc. In short, take these results with a big pinch of salt and remember, the slowest streets are the ones that cannot get a viable broadband service and thus won’t appear in these studies.

Table: Slowest streets for broadband in the UK

Table: Fastest streets for broadband in the UK

For streets to qualify for the study, postcodes needed to have the following criteria:

• A minimum of three speed tests from three unique IP addresses.

• Speed tests are from a commercial internet service provider.

• The test is from a fixed-line internet connection.

• At least 10 residential properties required at a postcode.