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.
The speed test data reveals that New South Wales ranks first place when it comes to download speeds – the southern state has an average download speed of 51.2Mbps. That's in stark contrast to the nation's western neighbours.
The report ranked Maryland as the best overall state for broadband internet, followed by New Jersey, New York, Delaware and Washington. The rankings considered overall access to broadband, access to low-cost broadband, download and upload speeds, and access to fiber-optic service.
Maryland and Virginia have the fastest internet in the US, with average internet speeds of 506.7 Mbps and 505.6 Mbps, respectively. Other states with notably high average internet speeds include the District of Columbia (473.8 Mbps), Delaware (469.7 Mbps), and Washington (451 Mbps).
Average hourly speeds for NBN very high speed services
The average hourly download speeds for NBN very high speed services ranged from 688 Mbps to 820 Mbps during December 2022.
Alaska has the slowest average Internet speeds of 17.03 Mbps. Speeds under 20 Mbps take longer periods for downloads and only works best for single-user streaming. Following Alaska for the slowest Internet speeds in the country are Mississippi (24.77 Mbps), Idaho (25.30), Montana (25.70), and Maine (26.05).
Melbourne customers of Aussie Broadband, for example, had the fastest peak downloads – 292.5Mbps – while the ISP was also fastest in Perth, but with a peak of just 212.9MBps. iiNet customers in Perth had the slowest peak speeds of any capital city, recording an average of just 94.3Mbps.
Australia now ranked 74th in the world when it comes to fixed broadband speeds, with a median download speed of 52.75 Mbps, uploads of 17.78Mbps, and latency of 11ms.
Australia has the world's fastest mobile internet but patchy coverage means it is accessible only 58% of the time. With an average download speed on 4G networks of 24.5 megabits per second (Mbps), Australia is more than two Mbps ahead of second-placed Italy.
For Australians, about 99% of our digital connectivity to the rest of the world comes through underwater subsea cables. We currently own or operate about 400,000km of these cables across the ocean floor – so much in fact, that you could lap the world 10 times with that amount of cable.
5G promises to be much faster than the NBN, just as reliable and with ultra-low latency. What remains to be seen however is the cost of data on the 5G network and the issue of coverage across Australia.
The free Wi-Fi zone stretched nearly 20 km between the National Institute of Technology (NIT) at the eastern end of the Ashok Rajpath and Danapur at the western end of the state capital, Patna.
Turkmenistan has been recognized as the country with the slowest Internet in the world, with users needing almost a full day to download a movie.
Cuba ranks as the nation with the slowest internet speed, but initiatives are underway to improve the country's connectivity.
Internet speed ranking by country and territory
According to the latest data on internet speed ranking, Singapore has the world's fastest internet. Its average download speed on fixed internet connections is 216.46 Mbps (megabits per second).
Google Fiber is the fastest internet provider, followed by Verizon and Xfinity. Let's get right to the point: Google Fiber is the fastest internet provider in the United States.
Turkmenistan has the slowest broadband in the world with an average speed of just 0.77Mbps. It would take over 14 hours to download a 5GB movie file in Turkmenistan while someone in Iceland could do it in just over three minutes.
5G speed in Australia
Currently, you can expect 5G speeds between 100Mbps and 1Gbps in Australia. In our testing around Sydney, we got average speeds of 500Mbps on Telstra and Optus, and 250Mbps on Vodafone. Exact speeds will depend on the coverage, congestion, and interference. 5G speeds also stand to get faster.