Nation’s digital divide laid bare in new study

THE UK’S worst street for broadband speed is almost 2,000 times slower than the fastest, an annual survey has found.

Greenmeadows Park in Bamfurlong, Gloucestershire has average downloads speeds of 0.14 megabits per second (Mbps), 1,899 times slower than Abdon Avenue in Birmingham which boasts average speeds of 265.89Mbps, uSwitch found.

The speeds mean Greenmeadows Park residents would need to set aside more than 102 hours to download a two-hour HD film on Netflix and at least 38 hours to download a 45-minute HD TV show, while those living on Abdon Avenue would take less than four minutes to download the same film and just 72 seconds to download the same TV show.

The average speed in the UK is 46.2Mbps, yet a quarter (26.3 per cent) of homes struggle with speeds of less than 10Mbps and one in eight (13.3 per cent) crawl along below 5Mbps, the comparison site’s study shows.

The South West dominates the speed rankings with five of the UK’s fastest streets found in Devon, Dorset, Cornwall and Wiltshire. Nine of the slowest streets were in the North, including in South Yorkshire, North Yorkshire, Merseyside, Greater Manchester and Scotland.

The number of broadband users enjoying faster speeds is growing with nearly a third (31 per cent) now getting speeds of 30-plus Mbps, up from less than a quarter three years ago.

But speeds are still a “postcode lottery”, uSwitch said, with areas such as South Yorkshire experiencing some of the fastest and some of the slowest broadband.

Dani Warner, broadband spokeswoman at uSwitch.com, said: “This research lays bare the extent of the UK’s digital divide. Streets that are relatively close geographically can be light years apart when it comes to the download speeds they are getting.

“Awareness of fibre broadband availability continues to be the biggest hurdle to people getting faster download speeds.”