Cable broadband is losing out to higher speed connections

The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development found that broadband was also widespread in South Korea, the Netherlands and Denmark.

But the US still has the most broadband users, with more than 49 million.

Overall broadband subscriptions in OECD countries jumped from 136 million to 158 million in the six months to December 2005.

The OECD figures revealing Iceland topping the list of broadband users were a surprise as South Korea is regularly touted as being the most wired nation on Earth following government drives to get people using fast net connections.

Fibre and cable

According to the economic group, Iceland has 78,017 broadband subscribers and South Korea 12,190,711.

TOP FIVE BROADBAND OECD COUNTRIES Iceland: 26.7% Korea: 25.4% Netherlands: 25.3% Denmark: 25% Switzerland: 23.1%

By comparison, the UK was ranked 12th with 15.9%, just behind the US with 16.8%.

The study also found the rate of people taking up broadband remained at an average of 15%.

Japan followed the US in the largest number of broadband users, with 22.5 million. It also leads in fibre-to-the-premises usage, with 4.6 million fibre subscribers by the end of 2005.

BROADBAND USERS IN OECD COUNTRIES United States: 49.4 million Japan: 22.5 million Korea: 12.2 million Germany: 10.7 million UK: 9.5 million

In Korea, fibre-based broadband connections grew 52.4% during the second half of 2005. However, despite the growth in the number of users connecting via fibre, the statistics reveal that DSL remains the leading broadband technology in 28 OECD countries.

In the US and Canada, cable subscribers outnumber those that use DSL.