WELLINGTON: Experts have questioned a report that ranks New Zealand 42nd in the world for internet connection speed.
The report, by cloud service provider Akamai, found New Zealand’s average connection speed was 7 megabits per second – the sixth fastest in the Asia-Pacific region and faster than Australia.
Australia was ranked 44th in the report, with its average connection speed dropping 1.8 per cent on the previous quarter to 6.9 megabits per second.
The country with the fastest average internet connection speed was South Korea, followed by Hong Kong and Japan.
However, broadband analysts in New Zealand said the results of the study did not stack up.
John Butt, of TrueNet, said: “There are a lot of issues with the data, and it doesn’t have credibility really.
“It is a good measure of the speed we see in New Zealand when we use the internet but that’s very different from the speed you can get, which is what they are measuring.”
Butt said Akamai’s results were based on the connection speed from all devices regardless of the type of wifi, device, age of the device or distance from the router – all significant factors when looking at internet speeds.
“A 10-year-old wifi has a maximum speed of about 2Mbps, an eight-year-old wifi has a maximum speed of about 11Mbps and current wifi has max speed of about 450 Mbps, so there’s a big difference, and Akamai don’t know what sort of wifi is on the other end,” he said.
“People have different wifi so Akamai is basically measuring the age of the wifi, it has nothing to do with connection speed in New Zealand whatsoever. Also speed drops off very quickly with distance from the router, so it’s quite flawed.”
In the Asia-Pacific region New Zealand, Singapore and China, all saw average peak speeds up more than 50 per cent over the previous year, the report found.
Despite his concern over the reliability of the study, Butt said New Zealand was tracking well globally, with a study conducted by the company showing investment from 2007 to 2011 in fibre to the node had improved performance in telephone line broadband, which was now significantly better than comparable Australian networks.
“We’re tracking extraordinarily well,” Butt said. “There’s very few stats worldwide that are comparable but there are some that are starting to be comparable now, and those are from countries including the UK, US, European Union and a few others and we are doing well globally.”
Akamai publishes its State of the internet Report each quarter and its latest report covered attack traffic, internet connection speeds and broadband adoption across both fixed and mobile networks, as well as trends seen in the data over time.
