Why is broadband in London so slow?

[wondering7777]

I have TalkTalk broadband and it's painfully slow - my download speed is 7.7mbps. I often struggle to watch programmes on catch-up because it's so sluggish!

However, I just looked at switching to Plusnet fibre and their download speed is about 9mbps for my area - so it barely seems worth changing.

There's also Virgin Media of course, but I had a bad experience with them before so don't want to use them again. Zen also looks good but I don't think they do TV - and I want to be able to watch BBC iPlayer, All4 etc on my telly.

Are there any other options available to me or am I basically just stuck with ridiculously slow broadband?

Are you on a 2.4GHz or 5GHz network? If you can see lots of other networks from your computer then that's most likely your problem. All the bandwidth is being taken up.

I'm with Plusnet on their lowest fibre package - just checked and ours is 18.2 download and 8.93 upload. We live z6 in SW London. The worst internet I've had was when I lived in zone 2 around Canada Water - when I questioned it I was told that it was likely I was in a rural area (wtf, I could see 1 Canada Square from my bedroom window!) and then when I said well you can tell from my address that I'm not, they made some excuse about the line.

There's no harm in moving providers and seeing, as most have a guaranteed speed thing now. I think they tell you what the speed is supposed to be in your property before you sign up too. I'd recommend Plusnet, we swapped from BT (don't go there...) and haven't had any issues in the 5+ yrs we've been with them. They're also great at offering the identical "new customer" deals to their current customers too which was one of the many reasons we left BT.

Talk Talk Central London. 44.7

What estimates of speeds and potential services does the following tell you?
www.broadbandchecker.btwholesale.com/#/ADSL

That's slow???? We currently get about 8mbps and it feels like bliss compared to the previous house.
Sorry, cant help with London suggestions, but I'd say you are doing pretty well with speed compared to many.

They do the infrastructure for BT and therefore for all the other providers (who just have the right to use their network) except Sky and Virgin, who run their own networks and possibly Vodafone.

That's wrong. Sky and Vodafone also use Openreach. Of the major operators, only Virgin have their own physical network.

There are several much smaller fibre operators, but mainly in very high density areas which are economic to connect.

I had TalkTalk, 7Mbps. When I swapped to Plusnet, they (PN) warned me the speeds would not increase. And they didn't. Now I'm WFH the slow speed's become an annoyance. However, I switched to unlimited end of last year so now stuck in a contract for another 18 months.

The whole of london is working from home.

I’m in N/E London and have virgin it’s brilliant. The sky at a family members a couple of miles away is pretty good.
Have you looked at Vodafone and EE? They both do broadband.

We used to dreeeeaaammmm of 7.7! When I rang Sky about the speed the woman couldn't believe we could use it at all it was so slow. It once took 35 hours to download a 1 1/2 hour programme.

I’m currently showing 362.6 as a download speed and 35 Upload. Doesn’t mean my trams meetings go smoothly!

Forgot to say, West London

It's not "London" as a whole, but within cities you do get slow spots. I reckon it's the poor areas, where the ISPs don't reckon they'll get many people for the premium phone-broadband-TV bells-and-whistles services, so those areas go bottom of the priority list for any upgrades. My company's office on a high street in a deprived area was noticeably late for getting anything better than ADSL.

I'm glad now I live in Hull, we may only have 1 provider but it's one of the fastest in the UK. Pretty much the whole of Hull has direct to house fibre and we have pretty white phone boxes 😁

Suggest checking your speed & performance at 3 or 4am which is not during peak customer usage hours & see if the speed is any different

Secondly, you may be in an area that has too many customers connected. Where the infrastructure needs upgrading to cope with customer traffic. Which would be at the expense of the provider.

All the small providers run off the backs of the main large providers

Have you tried to tether to a mobile phone ?
But beware of the charges !

Secondly, are you trying to work from home or are you using your connection for leisure ?

Business connections cost more & customers should receive better service

Mines amazing. In central London. I think no you have a non London problem

If you connect old equipment to the internet, it will work slower than new kit

Example
10 year old laptop, compared to brand new

Virgin advertises one of the fastest internet speeds of all the providers

How did that compare to what you have now ?

How does your internet compare before the Corona virus & after
Because lots more people are using their home internet provider during the virus
More usage
More internet traffic