In an attempt to determine how Australia’s broadband performs on a global and domestic scale, Ookla, the company behind one of the most popular online speed tests, collected data from 16.3 million fixed-line broadband speed tests and 436,174 mobile speed tests conducted by 3.6 million Aussies in the second and third quarter of 2017.
After crunching out the numbers, Ookla has revealed that Australia’s mobile broadband is a better performer than fixed-line internet, with the former clocking up average download speeds of 44.2Mbps – an improvement of 21.2% from the same period in 2016.
Fixed-line broadband, however, was nearly half that speed, lagging behind with an average of 24.1Mbps for downloads.
Upload speeds were 14.32Mbps for mobile compared to just 8.48Mbps for fixed line.
And the winner is…
According to Ookla’s report, Australia ranks 5th globally in terms of mean download speeds, squeezing in ahead of Singapore, but just getting beaten by the UAE.
For mobile broadband, Telstra was the best performer, clocking up a speed score – an Ookla metric that combines both download and upload speeds – of 42.28Mbps, with Adelaide coming out on top with the highest speed score for a carrier (Telstra) in a city.
Vodafone wasn’t a bad performer either, but Optus failed to impress.
Optus, however, proved to be the ‘fastest’ provider for fixed-line broadband, with an average download speed of 24.12Mbps, followed by Telstra and TPG.
Ookla predicts that mobile broadband speeds will continue to rise, given how much the top Australian telcos have invested in improving network infrastructure, and noted that Optus in particular could leverage its “3.5GHz spectrum for 5G, which would increase their speeds considerably”.
- Hooked up to the NBN already? Here’s how to test your NBN speed.
