Although Netflix has been wildly successful in Australia since its launch back in March, the video streaming giant proves Internet speeds Down Under aren’t that great, mainly due to excessive demand. TPG ranked first on Netflix’s first ISP speed ranking test, with Optus coming in second.
“This month, Australia and New Zealand joined the speed index, ranking 18 and 14, respectively on the list of 29 countries we rank. Performance for Australian ISPs was impacted by consumer demand exceeding the forecasts Netflix provided. We are working closely with these ISPs and expect performance to improve in the coming months,” Netflix representatives wrote in a blog post.
Telstra explained the slow speed test result in a blog post. According to Mike Wright, Telstra’s Group Managing Director of Networks, the result is due to Telstra offering service to customers who live further away from their ADSL exchanges. Here’s what he wrote:
“The Telstra Netflix results are not unusual for a national ADSL provider where the lower averages are due to the extensive size of our ADSL footprint. What it does show is that we are delivering a more than reasonable video experience during peak viewing times, providing over 2 Mbps on average across a vast and extensive network area, servicing some 3.9M customers over ~2800 exchanges.
The factors that influence the national average include the larger size of the Telstra network over a wider ADSL footprint and customer base which means that we serve a larger number of customers further away from exchanges. This is due to the longer length of the copper lines which causes data speeds to reduce with distance.”
Netflix and streaming providers in general recommend a minimum speed of 5Mbps for HD content. To calculate the speed index, Netflix says it measures the average primetime bitrate for Netflix content streamed by Netflix members per ISP across all available devices.
