Broadband in London is a street-level lottery
AdWe may earn a commission if you get a quote through these links. It costs you nothing, and it never affects our scores or rankings — those come from public data alone.
There is a particular kind of London disappointment that arrives about a week after you move in: the discovery that the flat you chose partly because it was "well connected" has one broadband option, it is slow, and the alternative is an engineer visit in three weeks.
This happens because broadband availability in the UK is not organised by area in any way that matches how people think about areas. It is organised by cabinet, by cable, and by whichever operator happened to dig up your particular street.
The same road, different answers
The unit that determines your broadband is not the postcode, the district or the borough. It is the physical infrastructure serving your specific address — which street cabinet you are attached to, how far the copper runs, whether a full-fibre operator has passed your building, and whether the cable network reaches your side of the road.
All of those can change between one end of a street and the other. A converted Victorian terrace and the purpose-built block next door can be on entirely different infrastructure. Flats within one building sometimes differ, if the landlord wired part of it and not the rest.
This is why "the area has good broadband" is not a statement that means anything. Neither is a speed quoted for a postcode district. The only figure that matters is the one for the address you are actually signing for.
Why this is the same argument we make about everything else
If you have read anything else on this site, this will sound familiar. It is the same point we make about crime, about transport and about green space: the borough average is not the thing you live in.
A borough-level crime figure averages a quiet residential street with a night-time economy half a mile away. A borough-level station count averages a Zone 1 interchange with a suburb that has one train an hour. And a borough-level broadband figure — if anyone published one — would average a full-fibre new-build with a Victorian conversion still on copper.
Havering records 0.5 Tube, Overground and rail stations (33rd highest of 33) is the transport version of exactly this. The borough figure tells you something real about Havering as a whole and almost nothing about any particular street in it.
Broadband is the purest example, because the variation is not gradual. It is binary. You either have full fibre at your address or you do not, and there is no partial credit.
What to actually check, in order
1. Check the full address, not the postcode. As above. This is the single highest-value five minutes of the entire move.
2. Check more than one network. Availability differs by operator because the underlying infrastructure differs. An address with nothing good on one network may have full fibre on another. Comparing what is available at a specific address takes a couple of minutes and is the only way to see all the options at once.
3. Check the lead time, not just the speed. London installation slots run to two or three weeks in normal conditions, longer if the property needs an engineer to pull new fibre or if the building requires freeholder permission. Order before you move, not after. Working from home for a fortnight on a phone hotspot is a genuinely miserable way to start in a new flat.
4. Ask the current occupier. If you can, ask at the viewing what they actually get, and with whom. It is the most reliable data source available and it costs one question.
5. Check whether the building has a wayleave. Larger blocks sometimes need the freeholder's permission before an operator can install. Ask the agent whether other flats in the building have full fibre — if they do, the permission exists.
If you work from home, treat it as a hard requirement
For anyone whose income depends on a video call not freezing, broadband belongs in the same category as the rent — a condition of the property, not a detail to sort out afterwards.
The awkward part is that it is the one major property characteristic you cannot see at a viewing, cannot infer from the area, and cannot fix if it turns out to be bad. You can put up with a small kitchen. You cannot put up with 12 Mbps upload if your job is calls.
The rest of the area still matters
Broadband is one variable and this post has deliberately treated it in isolation. It is not the one that should decide where you live.
Crime, transport, schools and green space for every London borough are on the borough pages — Hackney, Camden and Southwark among them — each figure ranked against the other 32. The map covers all 33 boroughs and 283 postcode districts.
And the same warning applies to all of it: those are borough figures. The street is where you actually live.
The borough is not the street
AreaScore scores crime, transport, schools and green space for any London postcode — not the borough average.
Open app (Beta)Get the next one by email
Occasional writing on London neighbourhoods and the public data behind them. No more than once a fortnight.