Akamai finds Aussie broadband speeds improve

Based on an analysis of over 8 million unique Australian IP addresses, Australia had the 48th fastest broadband speeds across the world, according to content-distribution company Akamai, which has released its quarterly State of the Internet report.

The result contrasted with that of a rival report from Cisco that purported to measure the quality of connections, not just the speed. It saw Australia drop out of the top 20 countries for the first time.

In the Akamai report, Australia moved up two spots in the global speed stakes with average speeds for the second quarter 2010 - up 9.6 percent on the past quarter to 2.9 Mbps.

Despite the improvement, Australia lagged its neighbour: New Zealand's average speeds shot up to 3.3 Mbps to place it at No.39.

The last Akamai report recorded Australia's average speed at 2.6 Mbps, placing it at No.50 behind New Zealand at No.42.

In the latest report, New Zealand also bested Australia on broadband acceleration as one of four countries - Singapore, Malaysia and China - that increased speeds by more than 10 percent in the quarter.

Australia fared better in "average peak speed" comparisons, coming 46th with 11 Mbps. Still, it was behind New Zealand at No.35 with average peak speeds of 12.7 Mbps.

The global average was 6.8 Mbps while the top, not surprisingly, was taken out by South Korea's 38 Mbps peak speed average.

This measure was particularly important, according to Akamai, because it was "more representative of what many end-user internet connections are capable of" since it included boosting technologies made available by some network providers.

But despite the improvement in Australia's peak internet speeds, no Australian cities made it to the world's top 10 list, which in the Asia Pacific region was dominated by cities in Japan and South Korea.

New Zealand failed to best Australia in one category: Akamai's "high-broadband" category, measured as the percentage of a nation's connections that had speeds greater than 5 Mbps.

Both countries had 12 percent of Akamai-connected internet users on 5 Mbps or higher. But, again, New Zealand's growth in this category was at 53 percent while Australia's was at 15 percent.

The sweet spot for New Zealand and Australia was for connections above 2 Mbps, accounting for half of Australians and 71 percent of Kiwis.

Mobile

The fastest speeds Akamai recorded from 109 mobile providers, including those in Australia, was 6.1 Mbps; the lowest was 115 Kbps.

Akamai warned that speeds it recorded from some providers may have been influenced by their use of "mobile/proxy gateway" architecture, however noted that almost across the board - 95 of the 109 providers - had improved speeds quarter-on-quarter.