Akamai’s released its statistics on average worldwide internet connection speeds. The interesting news is that, despite advances in connection technologies, the average worldwide speed has actually dropped, although Australia is bucking that trend.
Akamai’s State of the Internet report for the last quarter of 2011 shows that the worldwide average has dropped slightly to an average of 2.3Mbps, although it’s still up year on year. Which is somewhat pleasing news for me personally, given I average around 3Mbps from my home ADSL2+ connection, although if I look at the Australian average, it’s a little sobering, as that’s still over 5Mbps. I’m sure there are some Giz readers in both much better and worse positions.
On the flip side, only one per cent of connections to Akamai from Australia were sub-256kbps. That’s potentially pleasing, although given Akamai’s role in load balancing, it’s perhaps indicative of people not using many of the services that rely on Akamai rather than total percentage figures. Year on year, though, we’re still going in only one direction, and that’s up.
Worldwide, though, the picture actually shows a dip in average connection speed of around 14 per cent from the previous quarter. I’m guessing that’s down to more connections from nations with much lower connection speeds, as is the case across most of Africa, for example. We’re still on a gradual upwards curve year on year, however.
As always seems to be the case in these kinds of figures, if you want fast averages, head to South Korea, where the average is 17.5Mbps. I wouldn’t actually kill for 17.5Mbps… maim badly perhaps. [Akamai via TechCrunch]
you're complaining about 3mbps? I'm lucky to get 800kbps!
What's the average speed in Australia? I haven't done that much research about it.
My internet download speed's a constant 1.3MB/s (one stream, gets divided among multiple dls), and I'm from Western Sydney. I always assumed that the further u get from the city the slower your speed gets.
Not quite, it depends on your distance from the exchange. Your speed at 1.3MB/s (or 10.4Mbit/s) it pretty decent considering ADSL2+'s theoretical maximum is 24Mbit/s (3MB/s) then you have to take ~15% of that for copper overhead and then you get ~20.4Mbit/s (~2.5MB/s) And that's if you're connected next door to the exchange with no congestion :P.
That said that national average is sad though, since I get 6-7Mbit/s on my home connection which is a telstra next G modem :S not even on 4G yet!
My ADSL service syncs at just over 17Mbps. Sad to think this is the average of a quick country's broadband!
I wonder what average upload speeds are like in South Korea though - this is the one thing that kills my use of my connection (web server, file sharing, etc) - a 1Mbps limit...
These average speeds are, of course, tempered by the fact that some people just don't need superfast broadband (or at least, they don't think they do; we all know better :P). Just because our average speeds are low doesn't mean that we can't get awesome speeds! Just not as awesome as South Korea or Sweden. Remember, those countries are a fraction the size of ours, and much easier to provide a national network to when all their populated areas are grouped so closely together.
As a disclaimer, I get 24 Mbps with Telstra cable, and I'm hoping to see an upgrade to closer to 100 Mbps when Telstra finally gets around to sending me their upgraded modem. Thank you, low-to-medium density housing! :D
this is a good point, I wonder if average speeds decreasing might actually mean that more people, who have previously not had the net, are signing up to low speed plans? This is probably a good thing right?
I average about 3.6Mbps on ADSL2+, but only 72kbps on upstream. I can't wait to get off this neutered Optus hardware and onto NBN. My area is listed for build starting Feb 2013 and we really need it here! The exchange covers a massive area, but no RIMs so most users get really ordinary speeds and the phone lines are ancient so that makes the speeds even worse.
Ahh the downfall of Copper home internet, Horrible upstreams!
Australia is on the upswing?
I guess when you have nothing , you have so much to gain..
Exactly!! We are just catching up to most countries with epic net speeds now... behind in the times
In Canberra, and only able to get ADSL 1.
My brother is in Canberra also, and only able to get satellite.
Our infrastructure can only get better.
I had a line fault a few weeks back. Pre fault 8 Mbps sync. Post fault 14 Mbps Sync. Goes to show that quality of cabling is everything. That change alone is more than what many people are complaining of on here so I'm sure something could be done - we just know that with the NBN around the corner for many of us (not me unfortunately) they're not going to do anything about it unless they have to.
You might also have to note that with cable the more people connected the slower it is. So maybe australia with the low population it's one of the reasons
I'm on an 8mbps plan, but the uploads kill it for me; 384kbps is useless if you want to upload something. Not to mention come 8PM and the net is virtually unusable.
I have a1.5 mbit connection, my area isn't on the nbn rollout over the next three years. So the chances are that I'll be on a 4G wireless connection before I get any speed boost.
After Telstra screwing up a firmware update in the local exchange, they finally got it together. 16.8Mbps, so I'm fairly happy:
http://www.speedtest.net/result/1925709531.png
Speedtest also says that the global average is 10.34 Mbps.
I get 5.81Mbps on my ADSL1 connection, (ADSL 2 isnt avaliable in my area.....)
I get 100mbps speed.
So........ Shut