The UK has the fastest mobile internet speeds in the world

Smartphone in hands

The UK has the fastest mobile internet in the world, according to a new report.

Mobile users in the UK experienced average speeds of 27.9 Mbps in the first quarter of 2016, content delivery platform Akamai's State of the Internet report found, the highest of all countries surveyed.

It was far higher than the rest of Europe by about 10 Mbps - while the US recorded average speeds of only 5.1 Mbps when connecting to Akamai's platform.

However, Akamai's methodology may not give an accurate representation of the UK's real mobile speeds, The Verge suggested, because the speeds are recorded between mobile networks' proxies and Akamai's own servers, rather than between its servers and people's mobile devices.

Still, the news comes after recent findings that the UK's 4G coverage lags behind its neighbours.

While EE's 61 per cent coverage is the best in the UK, other countries are hitting 70 per cent and higher, recent research from OpenSignal and Which? found.

The report read: "While some countries are struggling to catch up with the rest of the world in 4G speed, the UK has an entirely different problem. UK LTE networks keep getting faster, but LTE coverage just isn't advancing at the same pace.

"While regulators and operators are already looking ahead to the 5G data networks of the future, mobile consumers today are still spending nearly half their time connected to 3G networks."