The UK ranks just 33rd in the world for average broadband speeds, behind the likes of Liechtenstein and Slovakia and only marginally above the worldwide average.

Broadband metrics group Ookla has revealed its Net Index, which ranks countries based on data collected by its Speedtest and Pingtest online connecting-testing utilities.

According to the index, which examined more than 1.5 billion records in total, South Korea has the world's fastest broadband, with the average connection zipping along at downstream speeds of 34.19Mbps. Latvia is a distant second with 24.3Mbps, followed by Moldova, Japan and Sweden.

South Korea's impressive speed is nearly five times the UK average of 7.69Mbps, which is only good enough for 33rd place, and only narrowly beats the global average of 7.67Mbps. The US isn't much better, coming in 26th overall with an average of 10.16Mbps.

At the other end of the scale, Zambia came in last of the 154 countries listed, with its 260Kbps average more than 100 times slower than that of South Korea.

The Net Index report also revealed the top locations within each country for speedy broadband, and in the UK, London doesn't even make the top 30. Instead, it's Loughton, Welling, Dartford, Clitheroe and Troon that are showing the rest of the country a clean pair of broadband heels.