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Someone tell Thorpe Lane in Suffolk their internet sucks – they're still loading the page

Suffering residents have an 8-hour wait for 45 minutes of telly

A street in Suffolk has been revealed as the slowest area in Blighty for broadband, where residents have to wait a painful eight hours to download just 45 minutes of telly.

Average speeds on Thorpe Lane in Trimley St Martin are 0.68Mbps, 260 times slower than the fastest street, Benford Avenue in Motherwell, Scotland, which record speeds of 177.01Mbps.

It is also 53 times slower than the UK average speed of 36Mbps, research by comparison site uSwitch discovered.

One in five broadband users struggle along with speeds of less than 10Mbps, while nearly one in ten experience less than 5Mbps, according to the research based on more than one million consumer speed tests over the last year.

Not surprisingly, speeds were fastest in and around the UK's largest cities, although only one street in London and three streets in Greater London made the top 30.

Recently, the good people of Templeton, Devon, erected a burning effigy of an Openreach van on Bonfire Night in protest over slow broadband speeds.

Ewan Taylor-Gibson, broadband expert at uSwitch.com, said: "It is astonishing to think that you could fly to Sydney in Australia in the time it takes to download a film on the UK's slowest street.

"While cable services offering the fastest broadband speeds aren't available at any of the UK's slowest streets, fibre-to-the-cabinet broadband should be accessible at more than two thirds of the most sluggish postcodes, something that might be a surprise to those that have been frustrated enough to run a speed test."

Ofcom has said it wants providers to make information on speeds more readily available. But Taylor-Gibson said that unless that information is made clearly available, it won't make a difference to consumers.

Reasons for such sluggish speeds can vary and can include a user's distance from the nearest exchange or difficulties with the property itself – thickness of walls, for example, can affect wireless connections, he said.

Moving routers to reduce interference from other electronics, physically connecting devices to the router using an Ethernet cable and Wi-Fi boosters can improve speeds, but Taylor-Gibson added: "It might be worth seeing if faster services are available in your area." ®

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