Australia falls in Akamai broadband ratings

Australia has dipped in worldwide broadband connectivity rankings measured by Akamai according to the company’s quarterly State of the Internet report, despite a growth in average connection speeds.

At the end of Q1 2015, Australia ranked in 50th position globally for percentage of broadband connections, defined as an Internet connection above 4 Mbps.

This was down six positions from the previous quarter, even though the percentage of broadband connectivity above 4 Mbps was 71 per cent. This represented a 4.1 per cent increase quarter-on-quarter.

Australia fared better when it came to broadband connections over 10 Mbps with 44th position. However, this was down three positions from the previous quarter.

The average connection speed in Australia for the quarter was 7.6 Mbps, a 3.7 per cent increase on the previous quarter.

Australia ranked in 47th position globally in terms of average peak connection speeds, down two places from the previous quarter.

Average peak connection speeds in Australia were recorded at 40.8 Mbps.

The average page load time for broadband in Australia was recorded at 4703 ms. In Q4 of 2014, this was recorded at 5406 ms. By comparison, South Korea recorded the quickest average page load time for broadband at 1614 ms.

Once again, Australia fared better in peak mobile connection speeds and recorded the highest globally with speeds of 149.3 Mbps. The United Kingdom came in second with average peak mobile connection speeds of 90.9 Mbps.

Australia also had the highest mobile broadband adoption rates in the Asia Pacific region at 96 per cent. Demark was the global leader with 98 per cent mobile broadband adoption.

A total of four countries – Australia (149.3 Mbps), Japan (126 Mbps), Singapore (116.4 Mbps) and Thailand (105.4 Mbps) – posted average peak mobile speeds above 100 Mbps.

“Perhaps due in part to rollouts of higher speed mobile technologies like LTE-A, the successor of 4G LTE, a total of 15 countries had average peak speeds above 50 Mbps, a large increase from just four in the previous quarter,” Akamai said.

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