Australia has once again registered the highest peak mobile connection speeds in the Asia-Pacific region in the Q2 State of the Internet report by Boston-based Akamai.
Recording peak mobile speeds of 171.2Mbps, Australia was one of only five nations globally to achieve peak mobile speeds above 100Mbps, Akamia reports. The others were Germany (at 171.6Mbps), Israel, Thailand, and the United Arab Emirates (UAE).
In A-Pac, Australia was followed by Thailand (127.7Mbps); Philippines (105.1); New Zealand (97.7); Japan (93.2); South Korea (67.6); Singapore (61.3) and Hong Kong (50.3).
Not quite so impressive – and no great surprise to many Aussie fixed-line users – was Australia’s fixed-line broadband performance. Average speed across the nation was a miserable 8.5Mbps – which was actually a 6.8pc improvement on last year.
But it left Australia ranked 51st nation for this category, an appalling performance for a nation which likes to pride itself on its uptake of technology.
On peak fixed-line speeds, Akamai reveals that Australia at 51.1Mbps lagged a long way behind Singapore, at 157.3Mbps; Hong Kong at 114.3Mbps; South Korea, at 110.1Mbps; Japan, 85.3Mbps; and Taiwan, 88.8Mbps.
The Akamai report covers many key global statistics. As well as connection speeds, it reports on broadband adoption metrics, notable Internet disruptions, “IPv4 exhaustion” and IPv6 implementation.
Globally, it says the average connection speed decreased 2.3pc from the first quarter of 2016 to 6.1 Mbps, but this was a 14pc increase year-over-year. Average peak connection speeds increased 3.7pc to 36Mbps in the second quarter, rising 2.5pc year over year.
Sums up David Belson, editor of the State of the Internet Report: “The continued increase in average connection speeds is a reassuring trend as online retailers prepare for the busy holiday shopping season.
“However, recent Internet disruptions caused by everything from government-ordered blackouts to a lone monkey sparking a widespread outage are reminders of the many factors that can affect access to and use of the Internet that is so often taken for granted.”
The report can be found and – hopefully – downloaded at www.akamai.com.
