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State of the Internet Down Under?

Life in the slowish lane

A quiet suburban town 18km away from Sydney with no CBD to speak of called Riverwood boasts Australia’s fastest average broadband speeds at 5.8Mbps, but according to Akamai’s latest ‘State of the Internet’ report this is a rare treat.

With only 12 per cent of its internet users enjoying speeds higher than 5Mbps, Australia has managed to keep itself out of the upper end of any Akamai’s top charting metrics.

According to the latest edition of the Akamai report, the average Australian internet connection speed is 2.9Mbps, near the bottom rung compared to neighbours Hong Kong (who enjoy 9.2Mbps), Singapore (3.3Mbps), South Korea (14Mbps) and Taiwan at 5Mbps.

Overall, Australia ranks as 48th fastest, lagging behind our smaller across the ditch cohort New Zealand which dropped slightly in the ranks, coming in at 41.

Cities in Asia again continue to dominate the top fast 100 list, once again accounting for three-quarters of the list, with 61 cities in Japan and 13 cities in South Korea and Hong Kong.

Given the ensuing battle to get a National Broadband Network off the ground in Australia (with New Zealand working on its own UFB, or Ultra-Fast Broadband initiaive), the stats speak of a significant competitive geographical digital divide.

Akamai reported over 533 million unique IP addresses, from 235 countries/regions connecting to the Akamai network during Q3. Australia claims over 9.3 million of these unique IP addresses, a 6.1% increase from Q2. New Zealand stakes claim to over 1.4 million new addresses representing a 5.4 per cent improvement since last quarter. ®

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