Australia’s Internet Speeds Are A Global Embarrassment [Updated]

Australia continues to fall behind most of the developed world when it comes to home broadband internet speeds. According to Akamai’s latest State of the Internet Report, our internet connection speeds are now slower than 50 other nations, including the likes of Thailand, Estonia, Bulgaria and Kenya. Here’s the full list of countries with better internet than Australia. (It makes for painful reading.)

The Akamai State of the Internet Report is a quarterly analysis of internet connection speeds, network availability and IPv6 adoption progress around the world. At the end of 2015, Australia was ranked 48th in the world. In Q3 2016, we were down to 50th. Now, despite our average speeds increasing from 9.6Mbps to 10.1Mbps, we have dropped out of the Top 50 entirely. Tch.

Here are the 50 countries and territories that currently have faster average internet speeds than Australia, ranked from fastest to slowest:

  1. South Korea: 26.1Mbps
  2. Norway: 23.6Mbps
  3. Sweden: 22.817.3Mbps
  4. Hong Kong: 21.9Mbps
  5. Switzerland: 21.23Mbps
  6. Denmark: 20.7Mbps
  7. Finland 20.6Mbps
  8. Singapore: 20.2Mbps
  9. Japan: 19.6Mbps
  10. Netherlands: 17.6Mbps
  11. Iceland: 17.4Mbps
  12. Jersey: 17.4Mbps
  13. Czech Republic: 17.3Mbps
  14. Latvia: 17.2Mbps
  15. United States: 17.2Mbps
  16. United Kingdom: 16.3Mbps
  17. Romania: 16.1Mbps
  18. Belgium: 15.9Mbps
  19. Taiwan: 15.6Mbps
  20. Bulgaria: 15.6Mbps
  21. Spain: 15.4Mbps
  22. Ireland: 15.3Mbps
  23. Kenya: 15.0Mbps
  24. Canada: 14.9Mbps
  25. Lithuanian: 14.6Mbps
  26. Germany: 14.6Mbps
  27. Israel: 14.4Mbps
  28. Hungary: 14.3Mbps
  29. Slovenia: 14.0Mbps
  30. Austria: 13.9Mbps
  31. Thailand: 13.3Mbps
  32. Slovakia: 13.0Mbps
  33. Malta: 12.9Mbps
  34. New Zealand: 12.9Mbps
  35. Andorra: 12.8Mbps
  36. Macao: 12.8Mbps
  37. Portugal: 12.6Mbps
  38. Ukraine: 12.4Mbps
  39. Poland: 12.4Mbps
  40. Guernsey: 12.1Mbps
  41. Qatar: 11.9Mbps
  42. Russia: 11.6Mbps
  43. Estonia 11.4Mbps
  44. Moldova: 11.1Mbps
  45. Luxembourg: 11.1Mbps
  46. Isle Of Man: 11.0Mbps
  47. Puerto Rico: 10.8Mbps
  48. United Arab Emirates: 10.7Mbps
  49. Serbia: 10.5Mbps
  50. Reunion: 10.2Mbps

On the plus side, Australia is leading the Asia-Pacific region in terms of mobile connectivity – our average mobile connection speed is 13.8Mbps, which is ahead of the Americas’ region leader Canada (10.3Mbps). We are also well above the global average broadband speed of 7Mbps. This is despite having a far larger territory to cover and a lower population density than many countries on the list.

Nevertheless, our overall ranking compared to the rest of the world can only be described as a disappointment. In its original guise, the National Broadband Network promised to make us world leaders when it came to broadband technology. Instead, we’re being bested by most developed Asia-Pacific nations including South Korea, Hong Kong, Singapore, Japan, Taiwan, Thailand and New Zealand. Our 4Mbps+ broadband adoption rates were also the lowest in the region with a decline in adoption of 1.9 per cent.

With that said, Australia is still in the process of building the NBN. As Akamai notes: “Providing fast, reliable internet to a vast rural population of this scale is a challenge that no other country has to deal with. It’s hard to compare Australia’s speeds to a small and densely populated country like Singapore for example, where a single switch provides hundreds of thousands of people with Internet.”

We have seen drastic improvements compared to a few years ago. Back in 2013, the average speed delivered in
Australia was 4.7 megabits per second. It’s also worth noting that ADSL services still make up the bulk of the approximate 10 million internet services in Australia.

If the completed NBN rollout gets us anywhere near the region of 25 megabits per second, our rankings will improve accordingly. But for now, 51st place is a pretty poor showing.

[referenced url=”https://www.lifehacker.com.au/2017/03/australia-broadband-speeds-still-lagging-behind-but-at-last-we-have-fast-mobile-connections/” thumb=”https://www.lifehacker.com.au/wp-content/uploads/sites/4/2016/07/iStock_72888179_MEDIUM-410×231.jpg” title=”Australia’s Broadband Speeds Still Lagging Behind But At Least We Have Fast Mobile Connections” excerpt=”Australia’s average broadband speed ranking is down but the country is leading the Asia-Pacific region in terms of mobile connectivity, according to Akamai’s State of The Internet report for the last quarter of 2016.”]

[Via Akamai]


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