Australia's internet speed has ranked as the 51st slowest out of 108 countries around the world, lagging behind underdeveloped nations such as Kenya and Sri Lanka.

Australia's online bandwidth has pathetic internet speeds compared to Norway, Sweden, Hong Kong, Switzerland, Denmark and Singapore - which all have speed above 20 megabits per second (mbps).

South Korea topped the list with the fastest connectivity at 26.1mbps.

Australia's average speed was recorded at 10.01 mbps, seven megabits behind the USA which was ranked at 13th with 17.2mbps , Akamai's State of the Internet report found.

Kenya recorded far better connectivity speeds than Australia - the east African country listed at the 23rd fastest in the world with an impressive average of 15mbps.

The Philippines had the worst internet speed of the countries surveyed.

In 2015 Australia was sitting at 48th on the list with an average internet speed of 9.6mbps, but last year the country slipped out of the top 50 entirely.

'Quarterly changes were positive across the board except for Australia, which posted a 1.9 per cent decline in adoption,' the report notes.

Vietnam and India were the only two countries to enjoy double-digit growth.

But mobile connectivity in Australia is topping the Asia Pacific region at 13.8mbps, which is higher than the global average of 7mbps.

The disappointing connectivity in Australia was blamed on the unfinished implementation of NBN across the country.
'Providing fast, reliable internet to a vast rural population of this scale is a challenge that no other country has to deal with,' Akamai said.

It is hard to compare Australia's speeds to a small and densely populated country like Singapore, for example, where a single switch provides hundreds of thousands of people with internet.

The original premise of the National Broadband Network vowed it would make Australia a world leader in internet connectivity.

But its slow adoption and those who have NBN have reported failing connections and slow data.
NBN Australia told Daily Mail Australia the report is an example of how fast broadband desperately needs to be rolled out across the country.

It said: 'NBN reiterates the importance of understanding what the report is detailing, which is average speeds delivered at a point in time across 10 million services most of which are old ADSL services, not the actual speeds the NBN network can deliver.

With almost two million homes and businesses now accessing fast broadband over the NBN network, and multiple thousands more connecting every day, we expect average speeds delivered to improve.'

By 2020 a global roll-out of a 5G connection is expected to drastically improve internet connectivity everywhere.
A 5G connection will allow users to download around one gigabit per second - or one HD movie in under two minutes.

(Daily Mail)