UK’s worst street for broadband is 260 times slower than the fastest street

• The slowest street for broadband is Thorpe Lane, Trimley St Martin in Suffolk, while Benford Avenue, Motherwell in North Lanarkshire is the fastest

• Thorpe Lane has a dire average speed of 0.68Mbps – 260 times slower than Benford Avenue’s superfast 177.01Mbps and 53 times slower than the UK average speed (36.2Mbps)

• One in five (20.6%) struggle with speeds less than 10Mbps, while nearly one in 10 (8.6%) are especially unlucky, crawling along at less than 5Mbps

• Urban areas dominate the field with four of the UK’s fastest streets found in the capital, two in Glasgow and one in Greater Manchester

• With superfast services available on more than half of the UK’s slowest streets, Uswitch calls on providers to make property specific broadband speeds available more widely so that consumers can see exactly what services and what speeds are available at their home.

With an average download speed of 0.68Mbps, Thorpe Lane in Trimley St Martin, Suffolk, has the slowest broadband in the UK, according to the latest test data of ‘real world’ speeds collected by Uswitch.com, the price comparison and switching service.

Thorpe Lane’s sluggish average speed is a staggering 260 times slower than the UK’s fastest street, Benford Avenue, Motherwell in North Lanarkshire, where average speeds peaked at 177.01Mbps over the past 12 months – and 53 times slower than the UK average speed for the same period (36.2Mbps).

On Thorpe Lane it would take over 21 hours to download a two-hour HD film on Netflix and nearly eight hours to download a 45-minute HD TV show . By contrast, on Benford Avenue, it would take less than five minutes to download a two-hour HD film and 109 seconds to download a 45-minute HD TV show .

According to the research, which is based on more than one million ‘real world’ speed tests run by broadband users over the last year, one in five (20.6%) broadband users struggle along with speeds of less than 10Mbps – while nearly one in ten (8.6%) crawl along at less than 5Mbps.

However, the number of broadband users enjoying faster speeds is growing. Nearly four in ten (36.7%) now get average speeds of 30+Mbps, which is up from 22% two years ago. But despite the fact that fibre broadband should be available to 95% of UK households by the end of 2017, a recent Uswitch survey found that only 57% of Brits believe they can access it in their local area.

Broadband users living in and around the UK’s largest cities are the most likely to find themselves with superfast speeds. Four of the UK’s fastest broadband streets can be found in the capital, while Glasgow contains two of the UK’s quickest streets and another is located in the Greater Manchester area. Additionally, the Scottish town of Motherwell contains two of the fastest streets in the UK for broadband speeds.

Conversely, two of the five roads identified as languishing at the bottom of the table for broadband speeds can be found in Suffolk, where you could drive the 30 minute trip from Thorpe Lane in Trimley St Martin to Creeting Lane in Creeting St Peter over 17 times in the time it takes to download an episode of Stranger Things at Thorpe Lane.

When it comes to broadband speeds, it’s still very much a postcode lottery. Two of the slowest and two of the fastest streets can be found in Essex. Red Willow in Harlow, for example, is less than a 40 minute drive from Noak Hill Road in Billericay, but boasts broadband speeds that are 143 times faster.

Surprisingly, on more than two thirds of the UK’s 30 slowest streets, fibre broadband is available so customers needn’t be wallowing on these glacial speeds.

The table below shows the 30 slowest streets for broadband in the UK: