The UK’s most sluggish street for broadband is in Suffolk

The Suffolk street’s sluggish broadband is 250 times slower than the UK’s fastest street

Thorpe Street in Trimley St Martin, Suffolk, has the slowest broadband speed in Britain with an average download speed of 0.68Mbps.

This is according to data collected by broadband price comparison website uSwitch.com from 1,064,681 consumer speed tests, between September 1, 2016 to August 1, 2017.

The Suffolk street’s sluggish broadband is 250 times slower than the UK’s fastest street, Benford Avenue in Motherwell, which averages 177Mbps.

Thorpe Street is 53 time slower than the UK average of 36.2Mbps. It would take residents over 21 hours to download a two-hour HD film and eight hours to download a 45 minutes HD television show.

The research from uSwitch also states one in five broadband users struggle with speeds less than 10Mbps – while nearly one in ten crawl along at less than 5Mbps.

However, users with faster speeds is growing. Four in ten (36pc) now get average speeds of 30Mbps plus, which is up from 22 per cent two years ago.

The government has pledged 95 per cent of residents in the UK will have access to ‘superfast’ broadband with speeds of 24Mbps or more by the end of 2017.

However, the uSwitch survey found that only 57 per cent of Brits believe they can access it in their local area.

Astonishing

uSwitch broadband expert Ewan Taylor-Gibson said: “It is astonishing to think that you could fly to Sydney in Australia in the time it takes to download a film on the UK’s slowest street.

“While cable services offering the fastest broadband speeds aren’t available at any of the UK’s slowest streets, fibre-to-the-cabinet broadband should be accessible at more than two thirds of the most sluggish postcodes, something that might be a surprise to those that have been frustrated enough to run a speed test.

“Whilst Ofcom has proposed having providers give more information on what speeds consumers should expect, unless this information is presented transparently, in a way that enables broadband users to compare the available options side-by-side, these changes won’t be truly effective”.