Britain has slipped four places in the world broadband speed league, leaving its network lagging well behind the likes of Latvia, Lithuania, Hungary and Romania.

The UK is the sixth largest economy in the world but has dropped to 35th in the rankings after being overtaken by France and even Madagascar, according to the latest analysis.

As other countries rush to install fibre-optic cable networks which are capable of providing superfast download speeds, much of Britain continues to rely on old copper telephone wires to connect homes to the web.

The UK is the sixth largest economy in the world but has dropped to 35th in the rankings after being overtaken by France and even Madagascar, according to the latest analysis

The average broadband speed in this country has been measured at 18.57 megabits per second (mbps). This is up slightly on the 16.51mbps recorded in last year's survey, which saw the UK in 31st.

The fastest broadband speeds are in Singapore, which is renowned as a global technology hub. Its average figure is over three times faster than in this country, at 60.39mbps.

Second place goes to Sweden, ahead of Denmark and Norway. Perhaps surprisingly, Romania comes fifth in the league at 38.6mbps, which is more than twice the speed achieved in Britain. Other poorer countries where speeds are well ahead of the UK's include Slovakia, Czech Republic, Slovenia and Andorra.

The data was collected by M-Lab, a partnership between Google, Princeton University and the Open Technology Institute in Washington.

It was compiled by Cable, which compares broadband speeds and services. The figures show the average global broadband speed rose from 7.4mbps last May to 9.1mbps this year – an increase of 23 per cent.

By comparison, the rise in UK average speeds was just 12 per cent.

The key to achieving superfast access to the internet is a network of fibre-optic cables direct to homes and businesses – known as fibre to the premises (FTTP). This could replace Britain's old-fashioned copper wire telephone system, parts of which are more than 100 years old.

At present, just 560,000 premises in the UK have FTTP connections. There are plans to reach 3million by the end of 2020 under upgrades run by BT subsidiary Openreach.

Dan Howdle, consumer telecoms analyst at Cable, described the UK's position in the global league as 'sad'.

He said: 'Compared to many other countries, the UK has simply come too late to a full fibre solution. Despite plans to roll out FTTP to homes across the next decade or so, the UK is likely to fall further behind while we wait.'