Broadband speeds in the UK are so dire, the country has dropped to 35th place in an annual league table for global broadband speeds, making it the third slowest in the EU and below Madagascar.
Cable, a broadband and TV comparison website, publishes the league table every year and 2018's results show the UK has slipped four places since 2017.
Earlier in the year, the government claimed it had delivered on its promise to extend "superfast" broadband to 95% of homes, but Cable warned that the UK was in danger of slipping even further down the league table.
"A number of other countries have leapfrogged us since last year, including France and Madagascar," said Dan Howdle, an analyst at Cable.
"Compared to many other countries both in and out of Europe, the UK has simply come too late to a full fibre solution. Despite plans to roll out fibre to the premises to UK homes across the next decade or so, the UK is likely to fall further behind while we wait."
For the second year in a row, Singapore pipped everyone else to the post, with Sweden, Denmark, Norway and Romania making up the remainder of the top five.
According to the analysis, carried out during the 12 months to 29 May, the UK had average speeds of 18.57Mbps, which means it would take around 36 minutes to download a 5GB movie. This is compared to just 11 minutes to down the same file size by those in Singapore, thanks to a mean download speed of 60.39Mbps.
Research from Ofcom suggested that almost one million Brits suffer from poor download speeds of less than 10Mbps. In its Connected Nations Report 2018, some 925,000 households and businesses were still unable to reach download speeds of 10Mbps, accounting for 3% of UK households and premises.
In January, the government said that more than 19 out of 20 UK homes and businesses now had the opportunity to upgrade their internet connections to superfast speeds of 24Mbps or faster, which would only put us in 22nd place in Cable's broadband speed league, still behind Madagascar.
Despite the fact, the UN named it one of the world's least developed countries, the island off the coast of Africa jumped up 67 places since 2017's results.
Top Ten for Speeds
1 - Singapore 60.39Mbps2 - Sweden 46.003 - Denmark 43.994 - Norway 40.125 - Romania 38.606 - Belgium 36.717 - Netherlands 35.958 - Luxembourg 35.149 - Hungary 34.1410 - Jersey 30.90
35 - UK 18.57
Picture: Shutterstock
