Do you live in Wheatley Road in Essex, or Erw Fawr in Wales? If you do, the results of a Uswitch survey suggest that you’re getting some of the slowest broadband download speeds in the country.
The average download speed in the UK is around 17Mbps – pretty much fast enough to do everything you need the internet for, from streaming HD movies to gaming online.
However, Uswitch’s survey suggests that some people are getting average speeds of 0.6Mbps – nowhere near fast enough to reliably watch Netflix or BBC iPlayer. In fact, it would take more than 15 hours to download a high-def movie at those speeds.
Broadband speed guaranteed
Inevitably the reasons for this are likely to be a lack of high speed broadband infrastructure in those areas (a lot of the addresses listed are in rural parts of the country), and it’s hard to quickly solve those issues. However, part of our Broadband Speed Guaranteed campaign would see companies forced to be upfront about the speeds you can expect to achieve when your broadband deal is up and running. If your house is only likely to get online at very slow speeds, your provider should be up front about it.
There’s nothing more annoying than being sold a package at, say 15Mbps, only to find out that once it’s been switched on you’re struggling to get more than 1 or 2Mbps. Our campaign would ensure that providers give you a written speed estimate – a range and a pinpoint – at the outset of the contract. But more than that – if you can’t regularly achieve the minimum speed they quoted you, you should be able to get out of your contract, penalty-free. This will leave you free to look for a cheaper deal somewhere else.
So far more than 27,000 people have signed Broadband Speed Guarenteed petition, but we want more of you to support us to show providers how big an issue this is for people. Have you been sold a faster broadband package than you’ve ever been able to achieve?
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