Two separate broadband speed indexes show Australia still lagging behind dozens of other countries.
Cable.co.uk recently published its Worldwide Broadband Speed League 2020 report, based on M-Lab speed test results. If you've ever run a speed test directly from Google search results, that's the platform used. We used to run an M-Labs speed test application on Lightning Broadband, but switched over to Ookla's quite a while back.
Anyhow, the results indicate Australia is ranking 62nd out of 221 countries measured in 2020. That's not crash hot, but how does it compare with Speed League results from previous years? Still not very well:
- 2019: 50th out of 207 countries
- 2018: 52nd out of 200 countries
- 2017: 55th out of 189 countries
Comments accompanying the results note:
"While global broadband speeds continue to trend upward, the truth is faster countries are the ones lifting the average, pulling away at speed and leaving the slowest to stagnate."
The results for 2020 were based on 577 million individual speed tests.
Ookla Comparison
So that's the Worldwide Broadband Speed League 2020's view on things, but what about Ookla's Speedtest Global Index? Ookla does some serious levels of testing - around ten million unique tests each day; so quite a bit more than M-Labs.
The latest Ookla results published for July 2020 note fixed line broadband speeds (download) put Australia at 62nd too (no change since June), meanwhile our friends across the pond in New Zealand ranked a much more respectable 22nd (-1).
Being left in the dust on an ongoing basis does bring into question our "clever country" perceptions in some regards; perhaps particularly when it comes to decisions that have been made on the country's behalf concerning internet connectivity technology.
However, on a brighter note Australia still continues to shine when it comes to mobile broadband, ranking at no.7 in July (+1) - so we're kicking some serious butt on that front.
If you're curious about what your broadband speed is, both upload and download, you can try out our Ookla-based speed test here. It takes under a minute to run and is compatible with all types of connections.
