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Roads in Folkestone and Margate ranked among the slowest for broadband speeds in Britain

By: KentOnline reporter multimediadesk@thekmgroup.co.uk

Published: 00:01, 24 April 2014

Two of the top 50 streets in Britain with the slowest broadband speeds are in Kent - and they're not rural.

Forget 'superfast' broadband, parts of Kent are suffering from snail-like slow speeds, according to research by uSwitch.com.

Whereas the average for the country is 17.8Mbps, in parts of Folkestone and Margate they barely reach a fraction of that.

Both Halstead Gardens in Margate and Canterbury Road in Etchinghill, Folkestone, notch up a meagre 1.52Mbps - ranking them at joint 29th slowest of all the streets in Britain.

In total, four in every 10 Brits are experiencing average speeds of below 5Mbps, while just 15% are experiencing superfast speeds of 30Mbps or above.

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Figures from Ofcom confirm superfast broadband is now available to almost three quarters of the UK, yet only 9% of the population is using it.

The wide variation in speeds means those living in the slowest streets will have to wait more than 15 hours to download an HD-quality film - compared to just nine minutes in superfast areas.

Marie-Louise Abretti, broadband expert at uSwitch.com, said: "There are still areas in the UK which experience broadband speeds so slow the service is negligible.

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"At the same time, superfast broadband connections are becoming more widely available but - as our research suggests - these are clearly not being utilised.

"More needs to be done to increase awareness of availability and cost.

"Superfast broadband isn’t as expensive as some users might think, with prices starting at £16 per month plus £15 for line rental".

In a separate move, Virgin Media has announced it's rolling out some of the fastest broadband speeds in the country in Folkestone.

Customers in the town are being promised speeds of up to 152Mbps - around 19 times faster than regular broadband.

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