Telstra may have come last in Netflix's inaugural comparison of Australian ISP speeds, but that's no surprise according to Mike Wright, the telco's group managing director of networks.
Netflix yesterday published the average download speeds its Australian customers were achieving when accessing the video-on-demand service. TPG took out the top spot, while Telstra was relegated to 10th place — the bottom of the list of ISPs Netflix compared.
Telstra customers achieved an average of 2.23 megabits per second across fibre, cable and DSL connections when accessing Netflix.
"The Telstra Netflix results are not unusual for a national ADSL provider where the lower averages are due to the extensive size of our ADSL footprint," Wright wrote in an entry for the telco's Exchange blog.
"What it does show is that we are delivering a more than reasonable video experience during peak viewing times, providing over 2 Mbps on average across a vast and extensive network area, servicing some 3.9M customers over ~2800 exchanges."
"The factors that influence the national average include the larger size of the Telstra network over a wider ADSL footprint and customer base which means that we serve a larger number of customers further away from exchanges," Wright wrote.
"This is due to the longer length of the copper lines which causes data speeds to reduce with distance."
"We want our customers to receive great viewing experiences and each year we invest heavily in upgrading and maintaining our services," the Telstra executive wrote.
"This includes upgrades to our core network, exchanges, local backhaul and content distribution solutions, and giving our customers the best new in-home devices like our Gateway Max."
The average Australian download speed was 2.82Mbps, according to Netflix.
The company recommends a 1.5Mbps connection for its service, and a 3Mbps broadband service for SD quality video; 5Mbps or greater is recommended for high-definition video streaming.
Netflix provides monthly ISP rankings in the markets it serves.
The service launched in Australia in March.