A US study has delivered an unwelcome finding about Australian internet speeds, finding that they are well behind the international pack.
One engineering expert said the nation would continue to tumble down in world rankings if the rollout of the National Broadband Network (NBN) continues in its current form.
The State of the Internet Report from cloud service provider Akamai ranks Australia 44th for average connection speed.
The US-based company produces the quarterly report looking at connection speeds and broadband adoption around the world.
Dr Mark Gregory, a network engineering expert from RMIT University, said the Akamai report was a reputable review.
"In the latest report, Australia has dropped a couple of places down to the 44th position, which is a pretty big drop really over such a short period of time," he said.
Dr Gregory said Australia's relative decline was because many other countries were moving forward apace with new and upgraded networks.
"The drop is happening because a lot of other countries over this period are moving towards cyber-based access networks, or they've already completed rollouts of what we would call the multi-technology mixing/mixed networks," he said.
"Whatever way you look at it, what it means is that the average speeds that Australians are enjoying are slowly becoming less than most of our competitors around the world."
Dr Gregory said the Federal Government's decision to switch from fibre-to-the-home to a mixed fibre/copper network was part of the reason for the decline.
"One of the reasons is that we're falling down the list [is] that we're moving towards utilising a copper-based access network," he said.
"Whereas previously, under the Labor government, we were moving towards an all cyber-based network, which is what most of our competitors are now doing."
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