UK falls off list of world's fastest broadband locations

Masan in South Korea is officially the world's fastest online city, averaging a maximum connection speed of 40.5Mbit/s, according to web content firm Akamai.

The latest Akamai State of the Internet report also found that Asian countries lead the way in broadband, and that 59 Japanese cities feature in the top 100 for average measured connection speeds.

The highest ranking European city is Umea in Sweden, which ranked 18th with 9.6Mbit/s. Twelve cities in the US made the top 100, seven of them in California.

The UK had no cities in the top 100. Oxford, which last time ranked fifth, disappeared completely after Akamai changed its metrics to remove university network connections which can distort the results.

David Belson, Akamai's director of market intelligence, explained that the dominance of Asian cities in the top 100 means that the rest of the world will be playing catch up for a long time.

"Countries like South Korea have benefited from a number of factors, such as population density and proactive government support and funding for broadband deployment, which has given them their position at the top," he said.

"Government intervention in other countries, like the US or the UK, indicates the right intentions in solving this issue, but I think there has been some surprise at the market's failure to meet this demand itself."

Unsurprisingly, South Korea, Hong Kong, and Japan took the top three positions in the top 10 list of countries, followed by six European countries, at an average of 15Mbit/s. The US was placed eighth with an average speed of 16Mbit/s.