uSwitch reveals UK streets with best and worst broadband speeds

[HEXUS]

The most poorly connected UK street is in Romney Marsh, Kent.

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[shaithis]

If I could only get a 0.5Mb service, I would move!

[3dcandy]

Cannock on top for the right reasons....can't get used to that!

[RT-XD]

Time to move to Straffordshire I suppose

[cps1974]

NTL (subsequently bought out by Virgin) put the cable infrastructure in way back where I live (and likely where the results are really high across the UK) - I live about 10 miles from Cannock (so still in Staffs) - provided the servers I'm contacting can provide the high speed, my line will hovers around the max 150Mbps - which is great for steam downloads as their server speeds are awesome - I can download huge AAA titles in minutes, like 1GB per min

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!

[scaryjim]

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.

Then again, I suppose "uSwitch reveals UK streets with best and worst broadband speeds" is a better headline than "uSwitch reveal that some people get different broadband speeds".....

[Brian224]

I wanted to move to Lydd on Sea but my wife said she would divorce me if I wanted to move anywhere without fibre. I guessed the internet would be slow there, but THAT slow...

Star Citizen = 100GB = 100 * 1000 * 8 Mb = 819,200 Mb (Assuming communication definition of 1k = 1000)
On my 100 Mb/s connection this would take just under 2 1/4 hours but in Lydd on Sea at 0.535 Mb/s this would take nearly 18 days?

The numbers seem ridiculous, am I out by an order of magnitude here?

[scaryjim]

... I guessed the internet would be slow there, but THAT slow... ...

That's one street, calculated using a methodology that is almost guaranteed to provide statistically meaningless results, particularly for areas that are ... let's say "probably less broadband-speed sensitive" (I don't know many people who retire to the seaside for the amazing broadband ). Take the results with a truck-load of salt

My first broadband connection was 512kbps, back when that was as fast as you could get, and I got most of that. Downloading a linux live CD (so ~ 700MB) took several hours. So yes, downloading over 100 of those would've taken several weeks. But the majority of people don't download 100GB games on a regular basis. They read email and mess around on facebook, at which point you'd probably notice the difference between 512kbps and 2Mbps broadband, but you might not notice the difference between 2mbps and 150mbps.

Besides, anyone who expected the largely rural counties to be anywhere but near the bottom of those charts needs their sense of reality checking...

[cps1974]

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.

Then again, I suppose "uSwitch reveals UK streets with best and worst broadband speeds" is a better headline than "uSwitch reveal that some people get different broadband speeds".....

i would have hoped the data would have come from actual consumer entries on speedtest.net, namesco, do you know it's just simply user-submitted figures? if so they might just highlight which streets tell the tallest tales lol

[cps1974]

I wanted to move to Lydd on Sea but my wife said she would divorce me if I wanted to move anywhere without fibre. I guessed the internet would be slow there, but THAT slow...

Star Citizen = 100GB = 100 * 1000 * 8 Mb = 819,200 Mb (Assuming communication definition of 1k = 1000)
On my 100 Mb/s connection this would take just under 2 1/4 hours but in Lydd on Sea at 0.535 Mb/s this would take nearly 18 days?

The numbers seem ridiculous, am I out by an order of magnitude here?

subject to Star Citizen's servers & line being able to allocate you 100Mbps constantly across the download

[scaryjim]

i would have hoped the data would have come from actual consumer entries on speedtest.net, namesco, do you know it's just simply user-submitted figures? ...

Yes, sorry, unclear in my statement. It's figures from uSwitch's own broadband speed checker, which I would skew horribly if I tried it due to being on a work connection* I imagine it's done in conjunction with someone like speedtest though. And it still remains that there is a huge question mark over the quality of connection from the consumer's computer to their router; their router to their master socket; the master socket to the main infrastructure; and the rest of the infrastructure between them and the test server. That's a lot of variables. Someone using the ancient wireless-b ADSL router they've had for ten years, with their laptop in the back bedroom and their router in their living room, is not going to get a good test result regardless of their actual connection.

*Meh, who cares, their methodology's bad enough to obscure any sample bias: it is indeed done in conjunction with Ookla, and they rate my work connection at around 95mbps in both directions which probably isn't ridiculous (my local switch might not be gigabit). So the data collection probably isn't a problem. It's what they've done with it after that I'm concerned about....

[shaithis]

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.

[crossy]

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.

[3dcandy]

and of course they get cash when you swithc...sooooooo

And anyone who wants to move to Staffs based on broadband speed is deluded we have some of the worst roads in the country...so your broadband flies but you get stuck in traffic for hours

[abaxas]

Until someone invents a browser or processor that can handle the millions of badly coded, slow and generally crappy websites out there. The internet will be slow as a dog.

[miniyazz]

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"