Improvements to the National Broadband Network promised by the federal government could see Australian internet speeds crawl up the global ranking from its current spot — number 71 — to the top 30, an expert has said.
The prime minister announced on Thursday that next week’s budget will include a $2.4 billion equity investment in the NBN over four years, which is supposed to expand full-fibre access to 1.5 million premises by 2025.
Australian internet speeds are poor by international standards. With a median speed of 52.46 Mbps according to the Speedtest Global Index, the country’s web connections are only slightly faster than Mongolia and Belarus and a bit slower than Palestine, Oman and Italy.
UNSW Business School associate professor Rob Nicholls said “we would expect to be in the top 30 or top 40” when the effects of the change is felt within a few years.
“This is a really important shift,” he told Crikey.
Countries in that bracket include Malaysia, Finland, Brazil and Israel.
Improving the NBN was an election promise made by Anthony Albanese, who has criticised the former Coalition government’s decision to opt for a multi-technology model using the existing copper network instead of running fibre directly to premises.
Albanese’s office said on Thursday the new investment would “benefit over 660,000 premises in regional Australia, and mean around 10 million homes and businesses across Australia will have access to speeds of up to one gigabit per second by late 2025.”
The impact of the NBN improvement will make a practical difference for consumers, Nicholls said.
“For those 1.5 million premises, the difference they will see is they can watch a whole Netflix movie without getting any buffering,” he said.
And while the Albanese government has lamented that the decision not to go for full fibre earlier has meant Australia has fallen behind, Nicholls believed the country would have a good chance of catching up to other countries with a comparable GDP.
“This is probably the best time to do it, with the prospects of recession in many countries,” he said.
“Australia is not looking like it’s going into recession, so this is a good time to catch up.”
