Here in the UK we love to put ourselves down and fool ourselves into thinking that everything is not as good as it used to be, but it’s all part of our modest British charm. Rather than complain about everything that could be better, we can at least celebrate with a smug smile that the UK has more subscribers to superfast broadband services than Europe’s five largest economies, with connections of 30Mbps or faster now available to 73 percent of the population, up from 60 percent in 2011, Ofcom announced today.

The big European 5 countries are France, Germany, Italy, Spain and the UK but the increase in superfast cable and fibre optic packages has seen the mighty Blighty storm from third place to leapfrog Spain.A whopping 84 in 100 people have access to a broadband which has increased dramatically from 64 per 100 back in 2012.

For you stat junkies out there, 77 percent of people have bought goods online in the last year, 87 percent of people use the Internet at least once a week and only 8 percent of the UK has never used the Internet at all – these figures represent the highest results from EU5 countries.

Although the UK broadband prices were predictably on the higher side, it goes someway to showing how the people of the UK want high speed internet and are willing to pay for it.

Where the UK ranks

Among the EU5, using the most recent comparable data, the UK has

• Highest broadband take-up (all types, by household), at 83%;
• Highest proportion of people to have bought goods online over a year (77%)
• Highest weekly usage of the internet (87%)
• Lowest proportion of people who have never used the internet (8%).

Ofcom chief executive Ed Richards said, “This is excellent progress for the UK, but there is more to be done. We want to see even wider availability of superfast broadband across the UK, so as many people as possible can enjoy faster speeds to access the internet.”

Whilst the Communications Minister Ed Vaizey added, “The Government’s rollout of superfast broadband is accelerating – Britons already do more business online than any other European country, and the news that we now have the best superfast coverage of all five leading European economies is testament to the progress made to date.”

So the next time you are muttering to yourself about how slow your broadband is or how high your ping is when gaming, take great comfort in knowing that it doesn’t get much better than this as you add another item to your basket.