Does this Leyland road really have downloads speeds 120,000% slower than the fastest in Lancashire?

A road in Leyland has been identified as having one of the slowest broadband speeds in the North West - but residents are scratching their heads.

According to price comparison service U-Switch, Higher Meadow has an average download speed of 0.70 Mbps, which means that it would take 16 hours and 29 minutes to download a two-hour HD film.

In comparison, the same film would only take 49 seconds to download in West Gate, Fleetwood, which has the North West's fastest download speed of 841.85 Mbps.

>>>Click here to read about the Project Gigabit scheme being rolled out in 2022.

The fastest and slowest speeds in the UK, according to U Switch

Residents in Higher Meadow have poured some doubt on the data from U Switch, but the company says that it's likely that as both Superfast and Ultrafast broadband are both available in Higher Meadow, residents are either not aware that they could get a better connection, or incorrectly believe that it will cost them a lot more.

One woman said: "We regularly stream on Netflix, and there's never been an issue for us. Sometimes it can go off for a moment or two, but I'm sure that's the same for everyone.

"My husband keeps an eye on the broadband speed, and he says ours is around 106 Mbps."

Another resident said: "I've got the fastest service Virgin offers, and I've never had a problem with speed, only the stability of the broadband occasionally when I'm listening to my Google Nest.

"Lots of people here work from home now too, so if it really was so bad, they would find that impossible."

Research shows that the number of broadband users enjoying faster speeds is growing. Two fifths of users (43 per cent) now get superfast speeds of more than 30Mbps, which is almost double than those (22 per cent) six years ago.

But despite the fact that superfast broadband is available to 96 per cent of the country, and ultrafast to 62 per cent, a recent Uswitch survey found that four in ten (40 per cent) are unaware they can access it in their local area[9].

The slowest and fastest UK streets have been revealed through the analysis of 276,083 speed tests run by broadband users over the last year.

The number of speed tests is up 124 per cent on 2019’s tally of 122,845, with the dramatic rise suggesting that consumers have been paying closer attention to the performance of their home broadband since the start of the pandemic.