The best place to get fast internet in Australia might actually be Tasmania, with results from thousands of home broadband tests revealing the island state has the speediest connections.
Hobart residents had the fastest internet of all capital cities with an average download speed of 26.3Mbps, according to 10,300 national speed tests powered by Ookla through comparison website Finder.
Sydney was the second fastest capital city in the data with a 24.2Mbps average, while Melbourne and Brisbane recorded 23.4Mbps and 23.1Mbps respectively.
Adelaide’s average speed was 21.4Mbps and Perth had the worst result at 19.1Mbps.
Location is one factor that affects speed, but the type of connection, provider and plan can all have an impact, Finder spokesman Angus Kidman said.
“While the area you live in and connection type are beyond your control, you can switch providers or change plans, and you can switch speed tiers if you’re on the [National Broadband Network],” Mr Kidman said.
He said it was “not surprising” that Tasmania has the quickest internet speeds as it has a higher proportion of fibre to the premises connections and a smaller population overall.
“The way our networks are built means there are always likely to be issues with everyone logging on at night, though we have seen improvements in recent months,” he said.
The average internet speed nationally reaches a high early in the morning, hitting 25.79Mbps from 8am to midday and falling to a low of 19.94Mbps from 8pm to midnight. This evening slow down was most pronounced in Sydney.
One of the reasons internet connections can be slow, particularly during the busy evening hours, is congestion. If a telco has not provisioned enough bandwidth for the customers on the network, this can cause an overall slowdown in achievable speeds.
The NBN Co has reduced congestion from four hours a week to 12 minutes by providing wholesale discounts to telcos for providing bandwidth and including a specified minimum amount in new bundles. Aussie Broadband started publicly sharing bandwidth data in March.
Ookla’s latest results found Australia’s average fixed broadband download speed was 27.5Mbps, and 50.04Mbps for mobile.
The global average is 42.71Mbps for fixed broadband and 22.16Mbps for mobile.
The speeds Australian customers are getting on their plans has been under scrutiny after several telecommunications companies were found to have been selling NBN speed plans that were unachievable for some connections.
Tens of thousands of customers have been provided discounts or other compensation due to action from the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission on this issue, and have been required to perform line tests to ensure customers get what they’re paying for.
The ACCC partnered with speed testing company SamKnows in 2017 to provide data about broadband performance to customers for comparison purposes.
The results from speed tests of volunteers found internet service providers delivered speeds of 80 to 92 per cent of their advertised speeds for national broadband network services.
The most popular NBN plan is 25Mbps, though recent discounts to the 50Mbps plan by the NBN Co has resulted in a rapid increase in customers on 50Mbps plans. Telcos, including Telstra, have upgraded their customers from 25Mbps to 50Mbps plans as a result of the price drops.
source:-smh
