While fast broadband speeds in the UK have improved over the last twelve months, the country still lags behind many other nations when it comes to high speed broadband. Akamai’s ‘The State of the Internet’ report from the final quarter of 2010 has found that the UK’s average broadband connection speed is 4.3 Mbps, placing it just 26th in the global rankings.

UK’s best broadband speeds improving

While the UK may lag behind other nations, the average fast broadband speed has increased by 16.2 per cent in the last year, the report found. It is also well above the global average of 1.9Mbps.

The Akamai research also found that just one UK city made the top 100 worldwide cities for average broadband speeds. The top 40 cities were all in South Korea and Japan except for Bradford, which featured at number 99 on the list, with an average connection speed of 6.1Mbps.

South Korea’s government has committed to providing 1,000Mbps high speed broadband for all residents. Ian Fogg, principal analyst at Forrester Research said: “The country is highly advanced in its thinking on both mobile broadband and home broadband.”

Advances from Virgin broadband and BT likely to speed up fast broadband in UK

Mr Fogg, a broadband expert, believes that the UK’s high labour costs and good existing infrastructure – resulting in less necessity to upgrade – has resulted in lower fast broadband speeds than other nations.

However, Fogg is optimistic that things will change as investments in superfast networks – such as the 100Mbps Virgin broadband system and BT’s fibre-to-the-cabinet (FTTC) network – begin to pay dividends. Mr Fogg added: “While FTTC only offers about 40Mbps speeds, a full FTTH service could offer 100Mbps today and 1,000Mbps soon. This would offer a step change in people’s internet experience”.