Crikey

Last week, we asked for help. And the Crikey faithful have answered the call.

From across Australia and the world, results have poured in from readers in response to Crikey’s national broadband test.

The test results (self-administered, like all good medicine, from Speedtest.net) are illuminating in that they tell us … well, not a lot actually.

Crikey makes no claims to the test results being scientific, but trying to discern any pattern in the table below is difficult. The most striking thing about the results is their randomness.

There are enormous variations in both upload and download speeds but these did not seem to bear any relation to geography, distance to server or ISP.

What we don’t know is the service level each respondee is contracted to and what it costs. Could it be as simple as getting what you pay for? The respondees from regional areas Griffith in NSW and Mackay in Qld will probably think not, especially if a lack of infrastructure is prohibiting even the opportunity to shell out huge wads of cash each month for your ADSL2+ connection.

After all, isn’t that the issue?

The results below are ranked in download speed from fastest to slowest. Unknown information from any given result is represented by a dash (-).

Crikey would like to thank everyone who responded by providing their Speedtest.net results.