Australia's broadband situation continues to stifle innovation and holds back the lucky country from truly being the clever country.
According to the latest broadband performance statistics in Akamai’s State of the Internet report, Australia ranks 46 in the world for average Mbps (megabits per second) at 7.8 Mbps. Since the last quarter, speeds have only improved by .6%.
Even within the Asia-Pacific region, Australia lags behind - with South Korea, Hong Kong, Japan, Singapore, Taiwan, New Zealand and Thailand all ahead of the country. In South Korea, average mbps is 20.5 mbps - more than 2.5 times faster than Australia. South Korea also has the distinction of having the speediest average connection speed in the world.
In terms of broadband adoption and plan speed, Australia ranked 52 globally for rates above 4 mbps, 45 for speeds above 10 Mbps and 39 for speeds above 15 Mbps.
While ranking in the bottom third of qualifying countries worldwide, Akamai says Australia may soon see significant lift in 15 Mbps adoption rates in addition to average speed improvements, as the National Broadband Network (NBN) fiber-to-the-node (FTTN) technology is progressively rolled out.
When that is completed in 2020, still only approximately 38% of Australian homes are expected to have access at speeds of 25 Mbps to 500 Mbps, depending on their distance to the nodes.
The good news is that Australians don't need to wait another 4 years to enjoy significantly faster connection speeds. The 62% who won't have fibre-to-the-node access don't have to miss out either. Companies such as Lightning Broadband can offer these types of speeds without the NBN using clever technology. Additionally, and unlike most NBN plans, the connections are symmetric; meaning upload speeds are as fast as the download rate.
Globally, average connection speed increased slightly (0.2%) to 5.1 Mbps from the second quarter, accounting for a 14% increase year-over-year says Akamai. Global average peak connection speed was 32.2 Mbps; up 30% year-over-year.
The full State of the Internet report can be downloaded here.
