UK cities continue to lag behind global rivals in broadband speed

UK cities continue to lag behind their European and Asian counterparts for the fastest average broadband connections, falling outside the top 30 locations, according to new data from broadband measurement firm Net Index.

The Net Index figures, based on data from speedtest.net, found that the fastest city in the world, in locations with over 75,000 unique IP addresses, is Vilnius in Lithuania with an average of 36.44Mbit/s.

This puts the city ahead of Hong Kong in second place on 34.14Mbit/s, followed by other eastern European cities including Sofia in Bulgaria (30.42Mbit/s), Riga in Latvia (29.13Mbits) and Tallinn in Estonia (27.40Mbit/s).

The figures also revealed that the high speeds in Vilnius helped Lithuania to become the top nation for average broadband speeds at 31.62Mbit/s, pushing South Korea into second spot with 29.82Mbit/s.

Overall, the UK ranked 37th, with 16 million unique connections measured and over three million tests, giving the nation an average connection speed of 11.36Mbit/s.

The best location in the UK for broadband is Beverley in East Yorkshire with a whopping average speed of 38Mbit/s, although this is based on a connection of at least 1,000 IP addresses, so is not eligible for inclusion in the cities list.

However, London has by far the most unique IP addresses of any city in the world. Net Index measured data from over 2.8 million connections at an average speed of 11.32Mbit/s. Sao Paulo in Brazil is second with 1.5 million connections.

The UK government is attempting to address the country's poor broadband infrastructure by ensuring that 90 per cent of the population have access to services of at least 25Mbit/s by 2015.