The UK is falling behind the rest of the world in the quality of its broadband services, according to a new study by Oxford University's Saïd Business School.

The Broadband Quality Score report (PDF), which measured upload and download speeds as well as latency, placed the UK 25th out of the 66 nations covered, behind Slovenia, Malta and Lithuania. Korea was judged to have the best broadband services, followed by Japan, Hong Kong and Sweden. The US came 15th.

"Only a few years ago, the analysis of broadband diffusion focused on who had an internet connection and who did not. As bandwidth intensive applications such as video became pervasive, the broadband gap is being redefined as a quality divide," said the study.

The research team found that broadband quality is linked to social and economic benefits, and that countries with high broadband quality have broadband on their national agenda.

The study analysed 24 million records from May 2008 to July 2009. Overall 93.9 per cent of countries surveyed had improved upload and download speeds from a similar study last year, but over 15 per cent had worsening latency problems.

Central and Eastern Europe, Western Europe and the US showed by far the biggest improvements.