A US study has delivered an unwelcome finding about
Australian internet speeds, finding that they are well behind the international
pack.
The State of the Internet Report from cloud service provider
Akamai ranks Australia 44th for average connection speed.
The US-based company produces the quarterly report looking at
connection speeds and broadband adoption around the world. Dr Mark Gregory, a network engineering expert from RMIT
University, said the Akamai report was a reputable review.
"In the latest report, Australia has dropped a couple of
places down to the 44th position, which is a pretty big drop really over such a
short period of time," he said.
Dr Gregory said Australia's relative decline was because many
other countries were moving forward apace with new and upgraded networks.
"The drop is happening because a lot of other countries over
this period are moving towards fibre-based access networks, or they've already
completed rollouts of what we would call the multi-technology mixing/mixed
networks," he said.
"Whatever way you look at it, what it means is that the
average speeds that Australians are enjoying are slowly becoming less than most
of our competitors around the world."
Copper-based network slowing Australia down: expert
Dr Gregory said the Federal Government's decision to switch from
fibre-to-the-home to a mixed fibre/copper network was part of the reason for
the decline.
"One of the reasons is that we're falling down the list [is]
that we're moving towards utilising a copper-based access network," he
said.
"Whereas previously, under the Labor government, we were
moving towards an all fibre-based network, which is what most of our competitors
are now doing.
Average connection speed by country
1. South Korea
2. Hong Kong
3. Japan
4. Switzerland
5. Sweden
6. Netherlands
7. Ireland
8. Latvia
9. Czech Republic
10. Singapore
44. Australia
"And we're also seeing this drop because, as we keep changing
direction with the NBN, we're putting in large delays before the rollout is
actually occurring."
New Zealand is one of the nations now ranked ahead of Australia,
with faster average internet speeds.
Dr Gregory said that was largely because it has stuck with a
fibre-to-the-home network.
"The key difference between New Zealand and Australia is that
New Zealand made the decision to do fibre-to-the-premise, they've stuck with
that decision," he said.
Even though Australia is much larger geographically, Dr Gregory
said fibre-to-the-home should be financially viable for a network to cover the
vast bulk of the population.
"Fibre-to-the-premise is viable in Australia, mainly because
most Australians are clustered around the coast," he said.
"If you look at the density of Australians, then really we
don't differ very much from most other countries in the world, we're just a
large country, but with the technologies that we've got today to actually roll
out fibre systems, the cost is not that different from most other countries in
the world."
Quality of streamed video 'much lower' than overseas
Dr Gregory said many households will notice the deficiencies in
Australia's internet when they try to watch television over the internet, such
as through the Netflix service coming to Australia this year, or its local
rivals.
"Even though the suppliers say they are giving us high
definition of 4K steaming, to actually be able to stream over Australia's
connection and our connections will be a lot slower than the rest of the
world," he said.
"What they will do is that they will increase the compression
ratio on the video.
"Even though they are saying that we are getting high
definition, or 4K TV, the actual compression will be far more in other
countries and therefore the quality of the video that we are viewing at home
will be much lower."
Dr Gregory added that another development may push Australia even
further down the rankings for internet speed.
"The most important change is occurring in the United States
where the FCC chairman - and that's their body that looks after
telecommunications - has decided to redefine broadband to 25 megabits per
second download speed," he said.
"So what that means is that, in Australia, the Government has
been saying that they're going to provide every Australian with high-speed broadband.
"In the future they'll be able to say that they're providing
Australians the bare minimum broadband under the new FCC determination on what
broadband will be called.
"For many other countries around the world of course, they're
moving towards gigabit broadband now and that is super-fast broadband under the
new definitions."
Have you got Cyber Insurance?
view the labels link for the topic, click and see more
Good for a grin ...... 
