As if to taunt those behind the new UK broadband initiative, uSwitch has revealed the worst connected streets in the UK in a recent connection speed survey, yet another frustration while everyone is salivating over the long-awaited white space internet and 1GB per second broadband services supposedly arriving.
uSwitch’s survey into broadband speeds compiles 50 of the worst streets to surf in in the UK, with the worst being Mount Pleasant in Halesworth, which averaged at a snail-like 0.128 megabits a second. Here’s a Google maps link.
The survey also compiled the worst towns in the UK, which on the bright side revealed the town with the best connection speeds on average; Leamington Spa in Warwickshire scored an ice-cool 18.865Mbps.
Ernest Doku from uSwitch spoke about the results close to when they were released, alerting readers that interestingly, “Many of the streets on the list aren’t in the far-flung countryside, but rather in more urban areas, nearer to exchanges and where we would expect to see higher download speeds across the board.”
Newspaper The Guardian reported that BT has popped up and said that the findings may be a little out of date, and released this public statement:
“This survey seems to be out of date and so the findings should be treated with a large pinch of salt.
“From a quick review it is immediately apparent that one of the allegedly ‘slowest’ streets has access to super-fast fibre broadband which offers some of the fastest speeds in the UK.
As a result, we would discourage anyone from treating this survey seriously.”
uSwitch themselves claim that this might not be a great rebuff to their stats, as their readings were compiled only in the last few months. It’s unlikely that a fantastically well-hidden upgrade by BT that only recently made these stats obsolete has come about, but this remains open for debate.
Meanwhile, the top ten worst streets list ranked up something like this:
- Mount Pleasant, Halesworth, Suffolk: 0.128 (Mbps)
- Forestfield, Horsham, West Sussex: 0.134
- Inchkeith Drive, Dunfermline, Fife: 0.169
- Faraday Avenue, Burton-upon-Trent, Staffordshire: 0.182
- Baird Avenue, Kilwinning, Ayrshire: 0.225
- Wheatears Drive, Romsey, Hampshire: 0.242
- Furzy Park, Haverfordwest, Dyfed: 0.254
- Calmore Drive, Totton, Hampshire: 0.267
- Mowbray Grove, Stockton-on-Tees, Cleveland: 0.274
- Colledge Close, Brinklow, Warwickshire: 0.279
If you live on any of those streets I am so, so sorry.
And it’s a bummer about the Broadband as well.
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