Akamai has released their latest State of the Internet Report, which shows the average Australian internet speed sitting currently ranked 50^th in the world for its average national internet connection speed at 9.6 Mbps, with a year on year growth of 23%. Whilst Australia has seen some improvement from the rollout of the NBN, this speed growth figure still languishes behind the number one country South Korea, which has almost three times the average speed of Australia at 26.3 Mbps (+28% YOY).

The most eye-opening figure in this report was that almost a quarter of the Australia’s population still receive an average speed below 4 Mbps. Signalling that the continued rollout of the NBN couldn’t come fast enough to those in need of a speed upgrade, to be in line with today’s modern tech-based lifestyle.  Our neighbours New Zealand sit ahead of Australia, with their average speeds a touch over the double digits at 11.3 Mbps. Comparable economies to Australia, such as France are also falling behind the pack of developed nations with a speed of just 9.7 Mbps.

To put some perspective on where Australia sits, developing nations such as Thailand (11.7 Mbps) and Kenya (11 Mbps) sit ahead of Australia. While our Asian neighbours continue to be at the forefront of digital technology, with South Korea (1), Hong Kong (2), Singapore (6) and Japan (7) all taking up positions within the Top 10 countries with the fastest internet speeds. These figures truly bring to light the need for the NBN Rollout to be a successful infrastructure program as it will allow many Australians to receive an internet speed in line with the demands of today’s requirements.