Communications and IT Minister Helen Coonan has taken solace – and a few political points – in new OECD figures that place Australia’s broadband speeds ninth in the world in October.

Late last month Opposition leader Kevin Rudd and Shadow Communications Minister Stephen Conroy made wild claims that Australia was the 36th worst broadband Country and that speeds were among the slowest in the world.

Along with Belgium, Canada and New Zealand, Australia is one of the few OECD countries in which every broadband operator surveyed by the OECD was found to impose data or bit caps.

In a feature familiar to Australian broadband customers, if users go beyond this cap, they must pay additional fees or have their services slowed to a snail’s pace. At last weeks Telstra briefing Bigpond Managing Director Justin Milne claimed that overseas networks would soon be forced to charge for broadband in a similar way to Telstra due to the fact that consumers were demanding “more and more bandwith” and as such networks would have to invest millions in delivering for the demand. 

According to the OECD, download speeds were reduced in 29 percent of the offers, and additional charges levied in 71 percent. The average per-gigabyte charge for additional downloads during a month was US$34.The OECD looked at 48 offers in Australia, and 33 in New Zealand, 10 in Belgium and 13 in Canada.

The OECD’s broadband statistics from October 2007 rank Australia ninth in terms of speeds offered by incumbent telecommunications operators, and in terms of average download speeds. There is nevertheless a massive difference between the speeds offered by leading broadband nations such as Japan, and Australia.

For instance, according to the OECD, Japan has the fastest average advertised download speed at 93.6 megabits per second. In Australia, the average advertised speed was below the OECD average of 13.7Mbps, at 12.1Mbps. Korea’s average speed is 43.3Mbps.

Australia rated sixth in the number of subscribers per 100 people, but nineteenth when it came to broadband affordability, measured on the basis of average monthly subscriptions.

Coonan claimed yesterday that Australia’s rise to ninth spot – from 16th – was “very embarrassing” for Labor leader Kevin Rudd, who earlier this year was stinging in his criticism of Australia’s broadband performance. “He simply doesn’t understand the curent performance on broadband. and he has misrepresented very egregiously what Australia’s position currently is,”
Coonan said.

But Opposition telecoms spokesman Stephen Conroy said “The Minister directed the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission to stop collecting statistics relating to broadband earlier this year and, as stated by the OECD, the Australian Bureau of Statistics had none available to supply,” he said.

“The OECD was left to base its findings on estimates provided by the department, resulting in Australia leapfrogging up the broadband rankings.”