Australia has dropped to 51st place in Akamai’s quarterly ranking of global internet speeds.
Despite the rollout of the NBN, which is expected to reach the halfway point by midyear, average mobile speeds were found to be higher than broadband speeds in Q4 2016, at 13.8 Mbps and 10.1 Mbps respectively. Australia ranks the highest in the Asia Pacific region for mobile speeds, and is also ahead of the US and Canada.
The country’s broadband speeds placed 50th in the previous quarter, with a 4.9% increase in speeds in Q4 not enough to improve the Australia’s standing.
NBN acknowledged the results in a press release, and said that consideration should be given to the fact that Akamai’s report measures “average speeds delivered at a point in time across 10 million services most of which are old ADSL services, not the actual speeds the nbn™ network can deliver.”
“It is important to clarify that average speeds delivered and measured by Akamai are limited by consumers’ purchasing behaviour and retailer network dimensioning. Today, eighty per cent of premises in Australia are ordering an nbn speed tier of 25 Megabits per second or less. We expect this to increase over time as both consumer demand and applications requiring faster broadband grow,” the NBN said in a statement.
