‘Digital divide just continues to grow’

I AM calling on the the Labour-run town and borough councils, and the Tory MP, to lobby the Government hard to improve broadband speeds in parts of Crewe.

Already the most economically and socially deprived town in the whole of Cheshire East, it now transpires that it has the worst broadband speeds in the entire United Kingdom.

It is evident that there is a totally unacceptable postcode lottery to the provision of broadband, and sadly some of the Crewe postcodes are at rock bottom.

The street with the slowest broadband speed is Wistaston Road in Crewe, where residents are somehow managing to get by with just 0.25Mbps.

In a time when having a strong broadband connection is more vital than ever, speeds at this level are completely unworkable for any household.

At this speed, it would take the unfortunate residents over two-anda-half days to download a two-hour HD film, and almost 24 hours to download a 45-minute HD TV show.

By contrast, the people who live on Britain’s fastest street for broadband – Haul Fryn in Birchgrove, Swansea – would only have to wait about a minute to download the same film or a mere 24 seconds to download the same show.

Sluggish-paced Wistaston Road is a staggering 3,567 times slower than Haul Fryn, where average speeds reached 882.03Mbps over the past year.

The difference between the fastest and slowest is astonishing, and has increased dramatically since 2019, when the worst street was only 830 times slower than the fastest.

This suggests that the UK’S digital divide is growing with the rollout of full fibre broadband that has now brought ultrafast speeds to 24 per cent of the country.

CLLR BRIAN SILVESTER

LEADER, PUTTING CREWE FIRST