Australia boasts the highest internet penetration in the entire Asia-Pacific but Wellington is the fastest Internet city in Oceania, according to Akamai’s latest ‘State of the Internet’ report. But the Q309 edition of the report still ranked Australia lower for penetration than the US and many European countries, and actually recorded a dropoff in average connection speeds and broadband penetration.

Published quarterly, Akamai’s report draws on data gathered by the firm across its global server network. It measures internet penetration in terms of the number of unique IP addresses against a country’s population, while acknowledging that the census population figures on which the calculations are based are static estimates, with the actual numbers liable to change over time – and also that individual users can have multiple IP addresses on multiple devices.

With these caveats, though, Australia emerged as a clear leader within APAC for internet penetration, at 0.37 unique IPs per capita. The closest runners-up, Singapore and South Korea, came in at 0.33 and 0.32 respectively, with New Zealand and Japan joint fourth at 0.29.

But while far ahead of the global internet penetration figure of 0.05 IPs per capita, Australia still lagged the US, which sat at 0.40, and European counties such as Norway and Sweden, at 0.49 and 0.42 respectively.

AVERAGE CONNECTION SPEED WANING: Despite its strong internet penetration, Australia was shown to be slipping down the ranks for average connections speeds. In the third quarter, Akamai measured the average Australian data rate at 2.28Mbps – a 15% drop on the previous quarter, placing it 8th in APAC and 47th in the world. New Zealand fared better, with average speeds growing 4.8% to 2.66Mbps: fifth in the APAC ranks, 34th globally.

And broadband (2+Mbps) connection rates showed a similar pattern. Akamai reported just 37% broadband adoption in Australia, a 19% slump from Q209; New Zealand, on the other hand, boosted its adoption rates to 58%, a 6.7% hike on the preceding quarter. This left New Zealand and Australia 5th and 7th respectively in the APAC broadband rankings, and 33rd and 52nd in the world. South Korea topped both regional and global tables at 94% broadband penetration.

Finally, Akamai’s granular city-level analyses also revealed some surprising numbers. Wellington emerged as the ANZ city with the highest average connection speed at 3.49Mbps, well ahead of NSW’s Riverwood, at 3.20Mbps, and Canberra, at 2.99Mbps. Cable modem access is a significant factor in the Wellington market, as is VDSL access via TransAct in Canberra.