CURRENT INTERNET LANDSCAPE: HERE AND ABROAD
It’s important to examine the current global internet trends, in regards to the overall quality and speed of the average internet connection within Australian shores. At the start of 2012, Australia sits at #41 on the NetIndex scale, which ranks countries in order of average internet speeds. The average speed within Australia is a reasonable 10.58 megabits/second, calculated as an average from all Australian speed tests undertaken at Speedtest.net since 2009 - which, according to Google, is the #1 internet speed checking site on the internet, with full local support from Australian internet service providers (ISPs) such as Telstra, Optus, Internode and iiNet. Australia sits alongside countries such as Spain (11.83mbit/s), Austria (11.97mbit/s), Poland (10.04mbit/S) and Israel (9.46mbit/s) in regards to an overall average internet connection speed.
Internet connection speed is a critical factor for video on-demand delivery. Simply, a good internet connection speed is “the cornerstone of webcasting adoption” (Lin, 2006, p87). We therefore will examine countries with far more advanced communication systems, compared to Australia, in order to predict if good quality, video on-demand is viable within Australian borders. Countries such as Hong Kong and Singapore - and to a lesser extent, The U.K. and The United States all enjoy a considerable faster communication networks - with the typical Hong Kong internet user enjoying an average connection speed of 37.01 megabits/second (almost four times the average internet speed found within Australian networks). It is also common to hear of fibre to the home (FTTH) networks, established in highly advanced technological nations like South Korea. There, some residents enjoy connection speeds of 1 gigabit/second - or to put that in perspective, 1000 megabits/second - or 100 times faster than the average internet connection within Australian shores. Next Page ➤ |