Anthony Albanese (Grayndler, Australian Labor Party, Leader of the House) Share this | Hansard source

The Minister representing the Minister for Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy has provided the following answer to the honourable member’s question:

According to McKinsey & Co and KPMG, the data supporting the claim that ‘Australia’s broadband services are the third slowest among OECD countries’ is based on the information provided to Technology and Innovation Foundation (ITIF) Broadband rankings 2008, which may be found at: www.itif.org/files/2008BBRankings.pdf

The ITIF data indicates that in 2008 Australia’s average advertised download speed was 1.7 Mbps, ranking Australia’s broadband services the third slowest out of the 30 countries surveyed.

By way of comparison, Japan recorded the fastest average advertised download speed of 63.6Mbps and Greece recorded the slowest average download speed of 1.0 Mbps.

The primary source for the ITIF speed ranking is a 2006 OECD report, Multiple Play: Pricing and Policy Trends.

More recent data published on 21 April 2010 suggests that in the fourth quarter 2009, Australia ranked 28 out of 33 OECD member countries in terms of actual average broadband speeds (www.akamai.com/stateoftheinternet).

See this speech in context