Australia sluggish on fixed broadband, fast on mobile

According to the Akamai Third Quarter 2012 State of the Internet report released yesterday, Australia's mobile broadband speeds are some of the best in the Asia-Pacific region, but it continues to lag behind in fixed broadband speeds.

The stats reveal that Australia placed 40th in the world on average connection speed for fixed, coming in at 4.3 megabits per second (Mbps), well behind South Korea's fibre-to-the-premises networks, which have an average of 14.7Mbps. Australia's speed improved by 19 percent year on year, but it was down 2.5 percent compared to the last quarter.

New Zealand was even farther behind, despite being farther along with its fibre-network rollout than Australia is. It came in 46th place in the world, with an average of 3.9Mbps for the quarter. The global average for the quarter was 2.8Mbps.

Australia's peak speed was slightly better, coming in at 34th, with 22.8Mbps. It was a year-on-year improvement of 41 percent. New Zealand fared worse, coming in at 52nd, with 17.8Mbps. Hong Kong topped the charts, with 54.1Mbps. Akamai noted that it was the first time an average peak speed has exceeded 50Mbps.

Australia still performs very poorly for the percentage of connections above 10Mbps, with only 4.1 percent of connections detected above 10Mbps. South Korea topped the charts, with 52 percent of all connections being above 10Mbps. Only 2.4 percent of connections in New Zealand were above the threshold.

Australia's stand in mobile fared much better. The average speed was 2.4Mbps, with an average peak speed of 14Mbps. New Zealand had an average of 2Mbps and a peak average of 11.7Mbps.