Akamai has released a report called "State of the Internet" which ranks average broadband penetration and connection speeds around the world.
High tech Asian countries topped the chart with South Korea, Hong Kong and Japan average Internet speeds ranked at 12Mbps, 9Mbps and 7.8Mbps respectively.
Akamai, publishers of the report, are a global hosting company that provides bandwidth for some of the busiest web sites. In the latest report the UK had slipped from 23rd to 27th position with an average 3.8Mbps connection speed, substantially lower than the 5.2Mbps claimed by Ofcom.
5.2Mbps would actually place the UK on equal standing with Akamai's 10th ranked country, Sweden, which seems unlikely. However Akamai surveyed just three unknown providers.
The UK's weaker performance in this report is due to other countries increasing average broadband speeds while the UK has remained relatively constant.
The report lends weight to calls for greater efforts to increase broadband roll out, particularly in areas which presently have no connection at all. However the new coalition government recently said there was not enough money put aside to pay for the planned upgrades and had pushed back the deadline for delivering 2Mbps minimum to the entire country until 2015, a delay of three years.
Akamai have provided an interactive web page which shows a "heat map" of connection speeds around the world as well as other interesting statistics.