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Street with slowest internet in UK [Daily Post (Liverpool, England)](Daily Post (Liverpool, England) Via Acquire Media NewsEdge) DOWNLOADING a film takes all day and it takes 10 minutes just to load a page on the street with the slowest broadband speed in the UK. Residents on Erw Fawr in Henryd may revel in the slow pace of life in the quiet Conwy village, but the snail's pace of their internet connection is driving them up the wall. A survey by price comparison website uSwitch.com found Erw had download "speeds" of 0.60 megabytes per second (mbps) - 30 times slower than the UK average of 18mbps. Maesceinion in Waunfawr, Aberystwyth, wasn't far ahead with a speed of 1.08mbps. How they must envy residents in Penygraig Road, Brymbo, Wrexham, who enjoy superfast average speeds of 31.91mbps - the ninth highest recorded in the UK. Raphael Callaghan, who lives in Erw Fawr, said: "It's very, very poor service we experience here. When you are trying to book a concert or train ticket, it takes an inordinately long time. We find it very frustrating. It's a rural community and businesses can't rely on it. "I'm a blues singer and songwriter and recording a new album. I need broadband for marketing. We have been here over three years from Liverpool. We had everything there. It's a big shock to discover you can't have good broadband. It gets so difficult to use it." Another disgruntled Erw Fawr resident said: "Sometimes it takes 10 minutes just to load a page. It takes all day for a film." Caroline Thompson, who has lived in Erw Fawr with her parents for the past 15 years, said: "There's no surprise there. It just stops working completely. We have got a couple of computers. One person can be on and the other person has to be kicked off. The router shows its working but there's no signal. "We changed from BT to Sky but it doesn't matter. Sky have given us a month free because we didn't have any broadband." She added: "It's been like this for years. We have had people out to check the sockets. We've had new sockets. But it's just as slow. It's a nightmare sometimes." Mike Caswell, also of Erw Fawr, said: "We'll hopefully get better broadband by 2015. My wife uses it to research her family history. We shop online. We book holidays. "We don't download films. If we did, we'd struggle. I check the speed frequently. It's always 0.6." Erw Fawr was tied for last place with Wheatley Road in Stanford- Le-Hope, Essex. Brymbo councillor Paul Rogers had a much happier tale to tell."I live right near Penygraig Road which is the main street. We have seen a lot of improvement in the broadband. Hopefully, we can get it to all the other areas in Brymbo. It's good for residents and businesses." The survey found that the fastest area for broadband was Loundes Road in Unstone, Derbyshire. A Welsh Government spokesperson said that Erw Fawr was earmarked for fast fibre broadband under the Superfast Cymru programme, which aims to provide 96% of homes and businesses with fast internet connections by spring 2016. He said: "We are leading the way with Superfast Cymru by making fibre available to more people, more quickly, than the rest of the UK to make Wales one of the most connected countries in the world." (c) 2014 ProQuest Information and Learning Company; All Rights Reserved. |