Our slow internet woes revealed
DESPITE our best efforts, Australia still lags way behind when it comes to home internet speeds.
The latest data to confirm our embarrassing position in the global rankings comes from Ookla Speedtest. According to the company that provides an online speed test service for internet users, Australia has fallen to 60th place for download speeds behind New Zealand, China and a raft of developing nations.
In January this year it found Australia’s average fixed line download speed was just over 33 megabits per second. Meanwhile Aussie households had an average upload speed of 13Mbps.
That download average amounts to being more than six times slower than the top performing country Singapore at 197 Mbps, and puts us behind nations such as Malta, Andorra and Qatar.
According to Ookla, Australia has slipped about five places in the rankings from last year when it hovered around 54th and 55th place. A separate study in 2017 put Australia at 50th in the world in the category.
As the National Broadband Network, which is now connecting 4.8 million premises, edges closer to competition, network bosses maintain that speeds will continue to improve and issues will disappear as the rest of the nation moves on to it.
However studies like Ookla’s suggest Australians are still labouring under relatively slow home broadband speeds.