Australia’s Fastest Average Broadband Speed Is 5.8Mbps

The Akamai ‘State of the Internet’ report for Q3 2010 has just been released, revealing interesting statistics about the net around the world. For any geek, the results for Australia are a slightly depressing read.

The fastest average connection speed for any suburb in Australia was 5.8Mbps in Riverwood, NSW. Having spent a year of my life living in Riverwood, I can honestly say this is a surprise. But the 5.8Mbps – while fast compared to third world countries – doesn’t even come close to cracking the top 100 cities speeds around the world. As a means of comparison, 29 cities in South Korea and Japan manage to get an average speed of greater than 10Mbps, while Constanta in Romania was the top placed non-Asian country in at number 48. Overall, Australia only managed to gain less than a percent overall in the average download speed during the quarter, which is hardly an encouraging figure.

But the scariest part is the overall figures. Put on some sombre music, because these figures may be distressing.

Average connection speed: 2.9Mbps
Peak connection speed: 12 Mbps
Percentage above 5Mbps: 12%
Percentage above 2Mbps: 51%
Percentage below 256Kbps: 4%

Now, these figures only include people who connected to the Akamai network, so like any statistic it’s not going to be 100% accurate. But it is an indication of just how woeful our internet infrastructure currently is – we currently rank in at number 48 in the world for average download speeds. That puts us behind New Zealand who come in at 41.

It will be interesting to see if the NBN rollout over Q4 last year makes any impact when the next report is released in a few months time.

[Akamai]


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