[LINK] Aussie broadband is slower than a slow thing in a slow town

[Bernard Robertson-Dunn]

Aussie broadband is slower than a slow thing in a slow town
Slower than New Zealand
By Drew Cullen
The Register
Posted in Telecoms,
31st July 2010 22:24 GMT
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/07/31/australia_broadband_speed_rankings/

So Australia is building a superfast fibre to the home (FTTH) national 
broadband network and not a minute too soon.

Last week's survey <http://www.akamai.com/stateoftheinternet/> from 
Akamai, a company that charges clients hefty sums for making their 
websites run faster, shows the country ranked a dismal 50th place in the 
global broadband speed league with an average speed of 2.6Mbps, behind 
even New Zealand (42nd and 2.9Mbps).

Yes, it's that bad. But help is at hand. The estimated $43bn build-out 
out of the NBN will deliver speeds of "up to 100Mbps to 90 per cent of 
premises" and everyone else with fast wireless, maybe delivered by 
satellite.

"Up to" is always a killer when discussing broadband speeds: it usually 
means "never, nowhere near, never." But the NBN will surely see 
Australia take its rightful place at, or near, the top of the broadband 
table, alongside South Korea.

As ever with such surveys, South Korea is in first place in Akamai's 
reckoning, with average speeds today some six times faster than that of 
Australia.

This is easy enough to explain - Korea is a rich country, with lots of 
people living in apartments in densely populated areas with access to 
cable. And cold winters. Don't forget the cold winters. Which means the 
indoor life for three or four months a year. And an obsession with 
online multiplayer computer games. This means a need for speed, the 
ability to pay - and to deliver.

Some more benefits of superfast broadband - it makes watching streaming 
video more pleasurable, and downloading illegal stuff from torrents so 
much quicker. And of course, knowledge workers, whatever they are, can 
work from home. If their bosses let them.

As for other stuff: build the infrastructure and surely, this will come.

All in good time...

-- 

Regards
brd

Bernard Robertson-Dunn
Canberra Australia
email:	 brd at iimetro.com.au
website: www.drbrd.com