uSwitch reveals UK streets with best and worst broadband speeds

[Deftee]

Holy-


Swindon are in the top ten for something that isn't worst towns in the UK!?

Home town pride finally floods in!

[Brian224]

So they've taken user-submitted figures of the broadband service they are currently choosing to pay for, and extrapolated that to availability at a street level? Yeah, that's totally valid research. I am completely convinced by their methodology.

Maybe those poor folks in the Highlands and Islands, depths of rural Wales, high on a hill in Cumbria, etc are still downloading/running the test. So if they'd finished then the result would have been different...?

Maybe I'm being too hard on them, but I'm becoming less than impressed with uSwitch - they seem to be doing a lot of these "we did a survey, now change to..." setups that get a lot of column inches.

Got to wonder - given the reported dire speeds - whether mobile-based broadband would be a better option for the folks getting the 512Kb/s speeds.

Looking at their declared methodology, only postcodes where there were more than ten tests were included in the report. This therefore excluded areas where there was no service at all, as well as the least populated areas

We took the slowest and fastest postcodes from the 1,030,865 speeds tests, across 33,015 unique IP addresses within 1,451 postcodes. These were taken over a six month period – 1st August 2014 to 1st February 2015. In order for a street to qualify for inclusion in the top or bottom 30, tests from at least 10 unique IP addresses and at least 10 postcodes were required.

[aniilv]

using virgin, in birmingham... as the guy said - its the best when it works, but when it doesn't... well ur f***

its definitely anything but stable even when it works "just fine" During my 3 month contract so far ive had about 3 random disconnects lasting about 2-5min and two nights of 150+ ping... Other than that, yes great.

[whatif]

I live in Sydney, Australia and skype my sister in Bradford, England. Well at least I try to.
We, fortunately, have had high speed cable for over 10 years and I can download a HD movie in minutes from a local source (average speeds of at least 3MB/s) I am not bragging, luckily we are just happen to be in the right place in Australia. Some places here still do not get broadband (Article from a newspaper March 2013 - http://www.smh.com.au/technology/tec...307-2fmw4.html) but it is slowly getting better, but the rollout is way behind the targeted timetable.
On the other hand, my sisters connection speed is so bad that we have never received a good continuous skype feed. It stutters and stalls all the time. Even when we just try the audio only, it drops out completely from time to time. We regularly lose the connection altogether.
Yet she sometimes has the opportunity to skype us from her work place (in London) and it comes through perfectly.
2 main problems to hurdle are the infrastructure (in our case we have to also include the slow i/o nodes technology into the country from overseas) and which ISP to use (we only have 2 cable ISP providers out of the many ISP companies here)

[Defiant]

There is houses and flats in parts of Edinburgh that dont sell, want to guess what their internet speeds are?

[Spreadie]

I'm getting 61mbps on a 38mbps package.

[crossy]

I'm going to predict that for many years to come, "Many households in the country are still struggling {will still struggle} with broadband speeds that fall far below the UK average"

What you said reminded me of that old comment (joke?) about the politician that said that he was going to ensure that no-one fell below the average. And then someone pointed out how they calculate the average...

There is houses and flats in parts of Edinburgh that dont sell, want to guess what their internet speeds are?

When did ESPC start quoting net speeds?

+1 on the Virgin Media comments btw. Their ADSL service is utterly shocking, but the cable one seems to be (with a couple of "Friday installs" excepted) pretty good.

[scaryjim]

Looking at their declared methodology, only postcodes where there were more than ten tests were included in the report. This therefore excluded areas where there was no service at all, as well as the least populated areas

That's the problem. 10 is a statistically irrelevant sample. Also, they determine different tests by IP address, but since ISPs use dynamic IP assignment several tests could be same property. Worst case scenario they could be judging an entire postcode based on two or three properties - you only need one of those to have a line problem to skew the whole street. They simply don't use enough samples to analyse at street level.

+1 on the Virgin Media comments btw. Their ADSL service is utterly shocking, but the cable one seems to be (with a couple of "Friday installs" excepted) pretty good.

Yeah, we had our BB drop last night about 12.15am, took an age to get through to tech support then they couldn't do anything for us anyway. Second time we've had an issue of an evening in the first month with them. Both seem to have been resolved pretty quickly though....

[cps1974]

Utter tosh.

be the tech guy that everyone calls and you realise there is a substantially bigger picture then the small one you are viewing.

Subscribing to Virgin is like playing a game of Russian roulette. Everything is great when things are going your way and utterly terrible when they are not.

I know 6 people that had to leave them (many having to kick and scream to get out of their contracts) because virgin dragged their heals for months telling them they would fix the issues. All of them had connections that were unworkable. Even loading webpages was causing timeouts.

And that's just how virgin operate. They oversubscribe until so many people in an area are getting their connections for free (because they have complained and complained and then virgin give them the connection free until it's resolved, instead of letting them out of their contract)....once they hit a critical figure, then they "fix" (i.e. upgrade) that part of the network.

It's a despicable practice and my brother actually got led along by them for 16 MONTHS with this BS.

Oh and my non-virgin connection has been up since the day it was installed......perhaps I should be saying that phone-line based connections are 100% stable and people should all move to them?

Internet connection speed and stability are based on 2 factors: Infrastructure and ISP. Virgins base infrastructure is good but as an ISP they are terrible (they do not want to spend money on upgrading congested areas). Having been with just about every UK ISP you have ever heard of (and a number you probably haven't) since Demon in 1993, plus having dealt with a plethora of connections for clients (both business and residential), I have seen this all first-hand......and virgin are just about the LAST isp I would ever recommend.

Did I not say it was based on my own experience of cable internet?? I had a similar ISP (the only cable ISP at that time) in the Netherlands also (UPC Chello) - not a single noteworthy issue from either. I can only make recommendations based on my own experience - not dissimilar to recommending a good restaurant - will others be guaranteed to enjoy such a fine dining experience as you did? No they will not.

And whilst there may be many folk who get a p*ss poor ISP service as you've described I would imagine (not unreasonably) that they are in a minority - although that can still be (by volume) a huge number of customers. In isolation 100,000 customers with the same issues as your brother is a significant number by volume, but if the provider has 10 million subscribers it will equate to 1% of their customer's having the rough time you describe whilst the 99% enjoy the service they are provided with

if anyone feels their ISP is failing them from a consumer perspective a simple threat (followed by referral to, if need be) of going to the appropriate regulatory body will do the trick - in this case it's Ofcom btw... but I am sure your brother knows that ;-)

[shaithis]

if anyone feels their ISP is failing them from a consumer perspective a simple threat (followed by referral to, if need be) of going to the appropriate regulatory body will do the trick - in this case it's Ofcom btw... but I am sure your brother knows that ;-)

Again, shows a lack of knowledge.

He did complain and that's how he got his completely broken connection free until he eventually ditched them (they still hadn't fixed the issue when he ditched them).

So complaining doesn't make them fix it.

[TeePee]

You guys with your 'fibre' just don't know how lucky you are. Living in a third world country with primitive technology and infrastructure is so depressing.

[crossy]

Again, shows a lack of knowledge. He did complain and that's how he got his completely broken connection free until he eventually ditched them (they still hadn't fixed the issue when he ditched them). So complaining doesn't make them fix it.

Sorry, I'm going to agree with what cps1974's saying. Just because you know one person who had the mother and father of bad experiences does not necessarily damn beyond redemption that company. I'm willing to bet that VM, like a lot of big companies, it depends also who you are dealing with.
For example, a close relative of mine had to deal with a large John Lewis' credit card bill for someone now deceased. She phoned JL only to be told to "pay up now or we'll start court proceedings". Luckily she had the good sense to phone back - got someone else - who told her that they would expect payment, but only after a reasonable time and they (JL) would give them some breathing space. Similarly, someone claimed against my wife's JL car insurance, but JL didn't bother to tell us. So when we came to renew, the new company was accusing us of being "mistaken" when we said there'd been no claim.

So do these two incidents mean that JL are a bunch of chancing swindlers? No, of course not.

So, as cps1974 says, VM have a lot of subscribers at the moment. To hold those subscribers they either need to be very, very cheap (and they're not) or delivering an acceptable service to the majority. I'd suggest that the latter is probably more likely.

Actually, one thing about VM - the quality of service is definitely directly proportional to where the person you're speaking to is. Liverpool, Newcastle and Glasgow cs's seem to be good, Manchester and somewhere-in-Asia are usually not. Apologies if I'm making pseudo-racist generalisations - just basing on my experience, no insults intended.

You guys with your 'fibre' just don't know how lucky you are. Living in a third world country with primitive technology and infrastructure is so depressing.

New Mexico = 3rd world? Must make you really happy to hear those Washington stuffed suits claim that 'merica is #1 in tech. (Not getting at the US, I have similar feelings about our UK politicians and their soundbites).

[MercutioUK]

apologies if I break rules but I can't recommend Virgin cable enough - I had a similar service in Holland as well - the speeds are insane and the overheads seem less than other ISP so the line stability is great (had like 2 outages in 5 years, both when the gas / electricity man hit their cable) and the ping is sweet, so no lag when gaming in MP / PvP environment

folks using telephone lines for their internet gaming need to read this and move on to cable ISPs!

Utter tosh.

be the tech guy that everyone calls and you realise there is a substantially bigger picture then the small one you are viewing.

Subscribing to Virgin is like playing a game of Russian roulette. Everything is great when things are going your way and utterly terrible when they are not.

I know 6 people that had to leave them (many having to kick and scream to get out of their contracts) because virgin dragged their heals for months telling them they would fix the issues. All of them had connections that were unworkable. Even loading webpages was causing timeouts.

And that's just how virgin operate. They oversubscribe until so many people in an area are getting their connections for free (because they have complained and complained and then virgin give them the connection free until it's resolved, instead of letting them out of their contract)....once they hit a critical figure, then they "fix" (i.e. upgrade) that part of the network.

It's a despicable practice and my brother actually got led along by them for 16 MONTHS with this BS.

Oh and my non-virgin connection has been up since the day it was installed......perhaps I should be saying that phone-line based connections are 100% stable and people should all move to them?

Internet connection speed and stability are based on 2 factors: Infrastructure and ISP. Virgins base infrastructure is good but as an ISP they are terrible (they do not want to spend money on upgrading congested areas). Having been with just about every UK ISP you have ever heard of (and a number you probably haven't) since Demon in 1993, plus having dealt with a plethora of connections for clients (both business and residential), I have seen this all first-hand......and virgin are just about the LAST isp I would ever recommend.

But... you are still quoting personal anecdotes as professional experience. For whatever reason virgin ended up getting quite a few ISP awards the last couple of years, that can't count for nothing.

Now, that said, I'm fully aware of the practices you speak of, my area (S8, Sheffield) has some parts of it affected by extremely poor (read unusable) Virgin Interactive internet at peak hours. The "trouble ticket" out for this is, as you suggest, a long term "we'll fix it once enough people complain" type issue. If you check the virgin official forums it's full of folks up in arms in certain areas.

From this, we can ascertain that if you are an area that is over-subscribed but not yet dire enough to get the upgrade, your service from virgin will be shockingly bad. Otherwise it'll tend to be absolutely stellar. The trick is to look on the virgin forums, do a search on the first part of your postcode and check the date on the complaint threads.

All other talk and waving of credentials is completely irrelevant as experience can vary greatly by area. I've also been around since the demon days (with turnpike as the dialer) and used a fair few ISP's. Your experience is a personal one based on your brothers issues.

I would also agree though that so far my fiber based internet has been excellent, I hit a solid 73MB/sec at my last address and getting around 19MB at this (at the limit of fiber where I am so it's understandable).

The telecoms companies are forced to offer you a "second thoughts" window where you can bail from the contract without issue. Use it in all cases.

[EndlessWaves]

So they've taken user-submitted figures of the broadband service they are currently choosing to pay for, and extrapolated that to availability at a street level? Yeah, that's totally valid research. I am completely convinced by their methodology.

The curious ~70Mbps average for the 'fastest' streets is interesting too. Surely at least a few housing developments must be putting in FTTP as standard?

[D-T]

So, as cps1974 says, VM have a lot of subscribers at the moment. To hold those subscribers they either need to be very, very cheap (and they're not) or delivering an acceptable service to the majority. I'd suggest that the latter is probably more likely.

Actually, one thing about VM - the quality of service is definitely directly proportional to where the person you're speaking to is. Liverpool, Newcastle and Glasgow cs's seem to be good, Manchester and somewhere-in-Asia are usually not. Apologies if I'm making pseudo-racist generalisations - just basing on my experience, no insults intended.

Which is more or less exactly what has been said earlier in the thread: when it's working, their service is great; when it's not, you're absolutely stuffed.

I had VM at home in Merseyside for ~10 years and used them in Newcastle for 2-3 years as well. Never had any significant problems in terms of the connection in Merseyside, any issues were short-term loss-of-service and were sorted out with no action on my part in a matter on minutes.

In Newcastle, where they were over-subscribed, the service was down for hours every single day for months at a time. I called up to demand a refund, which they eventually agreed to -- after a lot of argument and hassle -- but then their charge for the phone-calls was far greater than what was refunded for "intermittent" loss of internet service.

They do well because they provide a decent service to a large number of users without any problems. When things go awry, their customer service ranges from non-existent to absolutely diabolical; for a long time it was impossible to even get a contact phone number off their website without clicking through page after page of frustratingly patronising documentation on how to reset a router. Posting on their support forums didn't help either.

When you do get a number to call, expect it to be 20 minutes minimum before you actually get to speak to anyone -- that's assuming you've already spent the pre-requisite half-hour needed to work out how to navigate their automated phone system without dead-ending yourself. My dad forgot his VM account password and security question recently -- a nightmare situation, granted. I spent over an hour on a Sunday working through the automated phone system; I was first told they'd need to shut down internet & TV access to the house (they said to hang up if that wasn't acceptable), was then asked for the password which I didn't have and was finally told that their human call centre was closed, before being disconnected.

[TeePee]

New Mexico = 3rd world? Must make you really happy to hear those Washington stuffed suits claim that 'merica is #1 in tech. (Not getting at the US, I have similar feelings about our UK politicians and their soundbites).

Yes. Fastest service in the city is 3MB, from the government granted monopoly supplier.

Of course, I use 3rd world as a joke to complain about internet service here in the city, but the reality is that large parts of NM and AZ are Indian Reservations, where the most people don't have running water or electricity. Third World definitely applies.