While global average Internet connection speed is up considerably, Australia's broadband has fallen further behind the rest of the world states a new report.
According to Akamai’s State Of The Internet Q4 2015 report, global average connection speeds increased 8.6% quarter over quarter to 5.6 Mbps, while the global average peak connection speed increased 1.0% to 32.5 Mbps.
South Korea continues to boast the highest average connection speed globally at at 26.7 Mbps, a stunning 30% increase over the third quarter. Akamai says Singapore has the highest average peak connection speed at 135.7 Mbps; a 0.2% quarterly increase.
For Australia, the news was less than stellar. Australia saw the smallest average connection speed increase quarter-over-quarter; just 4.2% - and is now ranked 48. This is two places lower than in Akamai's previous report.
All other Asia Pacific countries/regions surveyed in the study posted gains in average peak speeds during the fourth quarter of 2015.
In terms of average peak connection speed, Australia saw a decrease of 6.3% quarter over quarter and an increase of 6.4% year over year. On this metric, Australia now ranks at number 60.
With regard to adoption of 15Mbps or faster broadband (which is significantly slower than Lightning Broadband's entry level residential broadband plan), Australia sat at 8.2% (ranked 44th). This was an 11% quarter-over-quarter increase and a year-over-year increase of 27%.
These figures come just a couple of weeks after Internet Australia called for a rethink of the National Broadband Network (NBN).
Akamai’s State Of The Internet Q4 2015 report can be downloaded here (registration required for free download).
Akamai is a content delivery network (CDN) services provider for media and software delivery, and cloud security solutions. It delivers more than 2 trillion Internet interactions; from which it draws data for its State Of The Internet report.
Slow download and upload speeds aren't just mildly annoying - in this day and age of bandwidth heavy applications, it seems the situation creates measurable physiological stress. The mind boggles!
Image: BigStock
