Unfortunately it’s no surprise that Australia only came 48th in a global ranking of broadband speed. But here’s the real shocker: New Zealand came 39th.
According to Akamai’s State Of The Internet Report, the average Australian Internet connection has a speed of 2.8Mbps, while New Zealanders enjoy a slightly less glacial 3.3Mbps. Akamai runs “content server networks” which essentially serve as giant corporate-funded caches that ensure that we don’t wait quite as long as we might otherwise every time a menu item changes in iTunes and we have to download a 90MB patch.
Before I completely destroy any sense of Pacific solidarity, there are much worse results in the region: in China, for instance, manages a measly 865Kbps. And as usual South Korea tops the charts, with 16.6Mbps. Weirdly the US only managed 4.5Mbps, which goes to show unlimited downloads don’t necessarily equate with unlimited speed.
Jim
Friday, October 22, 2010 at 12:14 PMSo what? Faster broadband is good because it allows geeks to download movies and porn faster? Get over this fixation on speed.
Shane
Friday, October 22, 2010 at 1:00 PMJim, sell you hsv, lancer, subarea or what ever else you drive and the we can talk
observer
Friday, October 22, 2010 at 2:02 PMNow that is silly. The internet is used by more than geeks. To name just two uses: Real time business video conferencing. Distribution of digital medical imaging. People need to get over the old stereotypes and understand the new mainstream.
Kalem
Friday, October 22, 2010 at 3:12 PMI need it to send uncompressed audio files between radio stations. If we don’t have a high speed connection, I spend hours just sending one file.
wtf
Friday, October 22, 2010 at 5:15 PMJim, you are a retard.
Simon Reidy
Friday, October 22, 2010 at 8:53 PMIs that you, Mr Abbott? Didn’t know you were a Gizmodo reader.
Boiler Room 4
Sunday, October 24, 2010 at 2:38 PMYou’re a legend, Jim – you pulled them in from everywhere. But it was too easy, so you get no points!
Jubbin Grewal
Friday, October 22, 2010 at 12:52 PMThat’s so bad Jim.. the world is moving forward, and clearly improving out net speed’s shoul dcount as one of the thing’s to help move this country forward. Imagine if we were stuck on dial-up.. then would you be saying get over it?
Shane
Friday, October 22, 2010 at 2:17 PMJim, wake up to your self, everyone uses the internet these days, company e-mails, transfer of data, online shopping.
It is the future, and as technology improves our infustructure needs to improve to support this new growing market.
Everything these days from inventory control of warehouses all over the country, to purchasing/sourcing goods is being transacted online. Our company transacts financial data to other Corporate business units in Singapore and Malaysia and the lack of a good internet work hinders our company regularly
LGB
Friday, October 22, 2010 at 2:29 PMBAH-HUMBUG….
At this point in time I’m more interested in much larger download limits without the price hike..
Extra speed would just be icing on the cake..
Wade
Friday, October 22, 2010 at 2:42 PMWhy should us Australian’s expect to have internet speeds comparable to the likes of Japan, South Korea and even the US? We have one of the lowest population densities in the world.
As I understand it, it just isn’t economical to roll out internet speeds that compare to the likes of Japan.
I’m not saying we shouldn’t be improving what we’ve got; we should be and we should be doing so in a way that lets us grow in the future. Planning anything with the goal of matching/beating Japan and South Korea’s speeds is just a waste of good money and little more than a pissing contest…
Kah
Friday, October 22, 2010 at 5:24 PMImproved connectivity is all the more important because of Australia’s dispersed population.
Cheshire Cat
Saturday, October 23, 2010 at 12:00 AMActually Wade its all a matter of how you discuss the stats. While Australia is a MASSIVE country with few people per hectare we are also one of the most centralised countries.
Two cities contain over 1/3rd of our population and when you throw in the other capitals and newcastle/the gong etc you have a good 75%+ of the country. Even if the rest of the country has ZERO internet it doesn’t bring the AVERAGE speed down by that much…. essentially our internet is crap because (like purchasing OS goods on a high flying aussie dollar) we allow it to be…. if we kicked up a stink and all switched to whoever gave us the best speeds, new cable would be being rolled out by the km.
Bring on the NBN
Cheshire Cat
Saturday, October 23, 2010 at 12:05 AMIn fact for urbanisation jpan and south korea are behind us. Only tiny countries the size tassie (or smaller) are above us really.
http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/peo_urb-people-urbanization
I know its not provable fact..but its certainly indicative. our governments own website says we are one of the most urbanised in the world.
Damo
Friday, October 22, 2010 at 3:32 PMJim picked a bad place to use the word ‘geek’ as an insult. Ha ha @ Jim.
cleverclogs
Friday, October 22, 2010 at 5:39 PMlol, thanks for making me laugh
Owis
Friday, October 22, 2010 at 5:12 PMDear Jim, thanks for your comment proving your ignorance in thinking that the internet has a total of two uses!
Australia’s ranking of 48 is disgraceful. The country is trying to position itself as a forward thinking Asia-Pacific business leader. The archaic internet speeds we have severely damage that mission.
Blake
Friday, October 22, 2010 at 9:54 PMWhile I’m not say Jim is 100% the rest of you jumped on him pretty hard as well. The answer lies somewhere in the middle.
I believe in the NBN, it has so much potential, and will be required for the future. And hey plus faster download speeds.
But this consistent complaining that we aren’t as fast as Japan or Korea or Sweden is stupid. I’ve made piss puddles that are larger than those countries. The cost to install in infrastructure is minimal compared to the NBN, so it is unsurprising that they have such a high level of service. It reminds of kids complaining to their mothers that it’s unfair that the rich kids has expensive stuff.
My second point is who here actually has a connection speed less than that average? Personally mine is somewhere around 8 times the listed number. If you want fast internet you can get it. The main reason people don’t is people don’t want to pay for it. Now you may argue that it’s because it’s too expensive, but the NBN is currently priced at more than a hundred a month which is more than I am paying for.
Realistically if you want fast speeds you can get them. This argument that we need the NBN for business is only valid for region centres where you can’t get access to (current) high speed internet. People should be talking to their bosses about spending actual money on their internet connection rather than waving their hands and complaining about the dire conditions of Australia’s internet condition.
Cy Starkman
Sunday, October 24, 2010 at 11:41 AMIn the middle? Is that the middle of sending an attachment on a business email where it hangs for an hour and then fails anyway. Or the middle of a two hour round trip to the printers cause you can’t send the job to them. Or the middle of the courier when the package containing a disc goes missing for a few weeks cause there is no other way to get the video to the client..
This isn’t high brow or low gutter stuff
not a geek
Saturday, October 23, 2010 at 9:35 PMThe way I see it is that the faster the speed plus the amount you can download is proportional to the cost. I could download a movie in seconds but then i would reach my monthly quota in a few minutes.
Sure speed is good as we hate waiting for anything but why doesn’t someone tell me a simple price/download formula.
When they kill the copper and the power goes off we cant use the phone unless we have a battery backup. Great modern ideas have some downsides but ignored or covered up.
Brisbane is getting high speed BB installed for nothing but i am sure this generosity will not extend to consumers.
Finally there are a lot of poor people who are happy to have a phone for emergencies has anyone thought of giving them a mobile phone with cost of calls the same as land line.
I dunno lots of things but don’t like having something given to me that i will have to pay more for but the giver cant tell me how much until i agree to take it. Telling me it is fast isn’t an answer.
Ocmrb
Sunday, October 24, 2010 at 5:32 PMof course South Korea needs massive broadband when starcraft 2 is the national hobby.
enndee
Monday, October 25, 2010 at 8:04 PMso what if we get porn faster?
i like fast porn.