[LINK] Net firms quizzed on speed limits - BBC News

[sylvano]

Further to the discussion on broadband speeds, I came across the following at 
zdnet, which (at the time I visted) had Australia at 20th in the world for 
speed. 

There are some *very obvious* issues in that there are many countries outdoing 
Australia (and many not) for their ranking based upon attempt counts of less 
than 100 (compared to Australia that is 190,000+), it doesn't distinguish 
residential from commercial, it doesn't provide a provider comparison and it 
aint a random sample per se.  

But I do appreciate the fact that zdnet quotes a fastest, slowest, median and 
average speed.  i.e. a semblance of distributional reality, or, a general 
picture of the range of experience, which is mildly satisfying.  For it is 
this aspect of measuring speed that is the key point of interest, I think, in 
the context of claims by providers: what is the general speed experienced by 
users. No one can deny there will be variations depending on sun spot 
activity, and whether one has decided to splice the 150 metres of extension 
cable from the wall jack to the modem.

And yes, I added my own time/traffic/hardware dependent input to the survey: a 
humble 4,185Kb/s recorded for my home connection, which places me below the 
median and the average for Australia from the self selected sample 
contributing to zdnet. (... I think back to patience of downloading  
satellite images over a 9600 modem on a 486pc, via gopher ...)

 Broadband Speed Test results by country
 http://www.zdnet.com.au/broadband/results.htm

Sylvano

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 Gnomon Publishing
 http://www.gnomon.com.au/