'Massive discrepancy' in broadband (From Redditch Advertiser)

'Massive discrepancy' in broadband

12:05am Thursday 8th November 2012 in National News © Press Association 2013

Broadband users in one road suffer a download speed 500 times slower than those in a street enjoying the UK's fastest speed, a study has found.

Cromarty Road in Stamford, Lincolnshire, has an average speed of 0.132Mbps, while Willowfield, in Telford and Wrekin, has registered speeds of 70.9Mbps over the past six months, uSwitch.com found.

Lincolnshire has three of the top 10 slowest streets for broadband in the country with speeds around 37 times slower than the national average of 9Mbps, the survey revealed.

Essex has four of the slowest streets in the UK but also boasts the third fastest - Cromwell Road in Southend-on-Sea.

According to the study, it would take Willowfield residents two minutes and 49 seconds to download a two hour film, and 11 seconds to download a music album, while Cromarty Road residents would need 25 hours and 15 minutes to download a two hour film, and one hour and 41 minutes to download the same album.

Lincolnshire's Burghley Road in Lincoln and Woodlands Drive in Colsterworth also registered "negligible" speeds of 0.259Mbps and 0.346Mbps respectively.

And uSwitch found those who live on Ledbury Road in Wellington Heath, Herefordshire, "would probably be better off sending snail mail than an email" with an average download speed of 0.192Mbps - the second slowest in the country.

The third slowest is Halsey Drive in Edzell, Aberdeenshire, where speeds of 0.25Mbps mean that downloading one song would take two minutes and 40 seconds.

The study found a wide variation in London speeds, with South View Road in Haringey having an average speed of 0.639Mbps.

Julia Stent, uSwitch broadband spokeswoman, said: "The massive discrepancy between the fastest and slowest streets in Britain shows what the Government is up against in its fight to drag Britain into the broadband fastlane."