UK broadband ranks 25th out of 66 countries

"Meeting needs for today"

1 October 2009 9:55 GMT / By Duncan Geere

A survey of broadband standards in 66 countries across the world has placed the UK at number 25 - with its broadband labelled as "meeting needs for today", but not "comfortable for today" or "ready for tomorrow".

South Korea and Japan came top, with Korea promising 1Gbps for everyone in the country by 2012. That's more than 280 times faster than OfCom's estimated average broadband speed of 3.6Mbps, and 500 times faster than the minimum broadband speeds for 2012 promised in the Digital Britain report.

Research was undertaken for Cisco and based on 24 million tests of broadband speed done via speedtest.net, which rates broadband speeds and compares them to other customers on the same providers.

Cisco's communication manager, Joanne Hughes, told the BBC: "Most studies are based just on broadband penetration or, if they look at speed they look at advertised speeds rather than real speeds. We wanted to look at the issue of broadband quality which is vital as new applications come along".

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