Before you start cursing your ISP when a sudden lag costs you a goal during a game of Fifa online, or means you take a bullet in the head on COD, then take comfort that we're above the global average when it comes to download speeds... just.

A study by leading digital game delivery company Pando Networks has revealed that the average worldwide download speed is 580KBps. The UK's speed is measured at 599KBps.

The figure is well below South Korea though, the global leader, with a zippy average speed of 2,202KBps. Weirdly, it's Eastern Europe that completes a majority of the remaining top 10 places. Romania is second with 1,909KBps, Bulgaria is third with 1,611KBps, Lithuania is in fourth at 1,462KBps, Latvia is in fifth with 1,377KBps and Ukraine placed eighth at 1,190KBps.

The USA is just ahead of the UK on 616KBps. The slowest measured city was Algiers, Algeria at 56KBps.

"The disparities we found were striking. While, in general, developed economies outpaced the developing world in average download speeds, big names such as the US, UK, France, China and Canada were not even close to being the fastest," said Robert Levitan, CEO of Pando Networks.

The figures are based on 27 million downloads by 20 million computers across 224 countries from January to June 2011, and there's an interactive map to see where your country is placed.

via chartsbin.com