Long-term world leader South Korea falls to second, UK stays in 13th

The UK remains in 13th place in the world broadband league while Iceland has overtaken South Korea to take the stop spot, according to the latest figures.

Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) research from December 2005 shows Iceland with 26.7 subscribers per 100 inhabitants, compared with 25.4 in South Korea and 15.9 in the UK.

Immediately ahead of the UK are the US and Japan, with 16.8 and 17.6 subscribers per 100 people respectively.

Digital Subscriber Line (DSL) technology is still the most common platform overall, though cable subscribers outnumber DSL in Canada and the US.

But next generation fibre connections are starting to take off, particularly in Asia. In South Korea the number of DSL and cable connections are falling as people switch to fibre, and Japan has more fibre-to-the-premises links that total broadband subscribers in 21 of the 30 OECD countries.

In the OECD's last survey, published in October, the UK was in 13th place with a penetration rate of 13.5 connections per 100 inhabitants.