Aberdeenshire village is home to slowest street in Scotland for broadband

By DALE MILLER
Published on 08/11/2012 01:49

BROADBAND users in one 
Scottish road suffer a download speed almost 300 times slower than those in a street enjoying the UK’s fastest service, a study has found.

Halsey Drive in the village of Edzell in rural Aberdeenshire has the third-slowest broadband location in the UK, according to a new survey.

A study of more than 
2.26 million speed tests found that the street recorded average download speeds of just 0.25Mbps (megabits per second).

It would take a sluggish 2min 40sec to download a single song at that speed.

At the other end of the scale, Willowfield in Telford – the fastest location for downloads in Britain – registered super-fast speeds of 70.9Mbps – 284 times quicker than the rural Scottish location. Cromarty Road in Stamford, Lincolnshire, was the slowest street for broadband in the UK, with speeds of just 0.132Mbps.

Scotland had four locations inside the top 50 slowest 
recorded as part of the study by independent price comparison service uSwitch.

Kirkton Road in Fenwick, East Ayrshire, was 13th in the undesirable rankings, with download speeds ­averaging a poor 0.429Mbps.

Redhall Road in Templand, Dumfries and Galloway, was 26th, with 47th spot going to Ardgay Road in Bonnybridge, Falkirk.

The government is targeting 100 per cent access to basic broadband – classed as speeds of about 2Mbps – by 2015.

Ninety per cent of the population would also have access to superfast services exceeding 24Mbps under those government targets.

Julia Stent, broadband spokeswoman for uSwitch.com, said: “The massive discrepancy between the fastest and slowest streets in Britain shows what the government is up against in its fight to drag Britain into the broadband fast-lane. These results show just how ambitious it is being in its bid to overtake the rest of Europe and haul Britain in line with the likes of South Korea and Singapore by bringing super-fast broadband to 
90 per cent of the UK.

“Rural parts of Britain, in particular, are still experiencing broadband speeds so slow that they might as well have no broadband at all. But, worryingly, the government’s 
super-fast broadband roll-out is heavily geared towards urban areas, which will only widen the rural-urban broadband gap.”

The study data was gathered via uSwitch’s website from April to September this year.

Merkland Road in Aberdeen made the cut when it came to Britain’s ten fastest streets for downloading – with average speeds of 62.96Mbps making it fifth in the survey.

The slowest and fastest broadband areas

Slowest

1. Stamford, Lincolnshire (0.132Mbps)

2. Wellington Heath, Herefordshire (0.192Mbps)

3. Halsey Drive, Edzell, Aberdeenshire (0.25Mbps)

4. Lincoln, Lincolnshire (0.259Mbps)

5. Clacton-on-Sea, Essex (0.26Mbps)

Fastest

1. Telford, (70.90Mbps)

2. Allenton, Derby (67.10Mbps)

3. Southend-on-Sea, Essex (66.97Mbps)

4. Beverley, Yorkshire (64.28Mbps)

5. Merkland Road, Aberdeen, (62.96Mbps)