Revealed: London street with the slowest broadband speed

By Alexandra Warren & Toby Porter
toby@slpmedia.co.uk

It’s a quiet street near the peaceful greenery of Hither Green Cemetery.

Residents welcome the fact they can hardly hear the busiest part of South London’s busiest road, the South Circular, only a stone’s throw away.

Neither are they too bothered by the 25 tracks of sidings on the busy railway line between London and the Kent coast.

But the residents of South Park Crescent, Lewisham, have one reason to be unhappy about how quiet their street is.

They get the worst broadband reception in London. Their virtual speed is the eighth worst in the country.

It has download speeds of just 0.39Mbps, Uswitch’s annual report reveals.

They could probably cook up a roast dinner in the time it takes to download one picture, so at least the family win out.

At least, though, it is one-and-a-half times faster than the worst street in Britain, in Crewe.

Maybe South Park Crescent’s families wish they lived in Grange Road, Ilford, which is London’s fastest at 877.48Mbps – about 2,500 times faster than theirs, where it is a lot harder to do anything other than blink in the time it takes to download a whole library of photos.

Even Childers Street, at the other end of the borough of Lewisham, would be a massive improvement, with 333.54 Mbps.

The third worst street in London is Darlington Road in West Norwood, a small cul-de-sac off Knights Hill.

Coming in fourth is Moodkee Street in Canada Water, which seems to be named after an inconclusive 1845 battle between the British troops of the East India Company and a Sikh army.

Westminster even has a street in the worst 10 – but then Saltram Crescent is in the less-posh part, in Kilburn.

South London’s smuggest browsers are in The Underwood, Greenwich, which is just a hefty Tiger Woods drive from the Royal Blackheath Golf Club.

If the global golfer did ever visit, he could download the story, and plenty of pictures, at a rate of 532.90 Mbps.

Great Dover Street in Borough and Lordship Lane in Dulwich are also in the upper echelons of high-tech, with speeds of 398.51 and 336.25 respectively.

And residents of Broxash Road, overlooking Clapham Common, also have reason to feel superior, as they squeak into London’s top 10 fastest broadband streets.

Ernest Doku, a broadband expert at Uswitch.com, said: “Britain’s broadband keeps getting quicker every year, but parts of the country continue to be left behind.

“Residents of this year’s fastest street could download a film in 47 seconds – where it would take those living in other roads hours to do the same thing.

“At a time when so many of us rely on our broadband for work, streaming films and TV and gaming, it’s hard to imagine how frustrating such a slow connection must be.

“It’s great to witness the increased uptake of ultrafast broadband, but we don’t want to see large swathes of the country left behind on shoddy connections that aren’t cutting it for modern life.

“Initiatives like the Universal Service Obligation and Project Gigabit are helping improve connections at both ends of the spectrum, but there is a lot more to be done so consumers don’t get left behind.

“Of the 10 slowest streets, nine could have access to faster broadband, so we urge residents there — and anyone else unhappy with their broadband speeds — to do a quick search online to see what speeds they could be getting with another provider.”