The Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development found Australia’s download speeds were the second slowest of any OECD club member – slower than Hungary and Turkey, and only marginally faster than last-placed Slovak Republic.
The OECD Communications Outlook 2007 report also found a bundle of typical telecommunications services – including fixed-line, mobile and local and long distance calls – were far more expensive in Australia than comparable economies in the OECD.
In particular, the report found typical communications bundles used by small businesses were especially costly.
Although Telstra’s internet download speeds have improved since the data for the report was compiled in 2006 (top speeds have jumped for 1.5Mbps to about 24Mbps), countries like Japan and South Korea are now offering customers speeds of up to 100Mbps.
The report found that overall investment continued to rise and consumers were generally paying less for their communications services among OECD countries.
It found that 60 per cent of the OECD’s 256 million internet subscribers had access to broadband connections at the end of 2005.
The move to introduce broadband services has presented challenges for incumbent communications service providers.
“(Broadband) offers an additional revenue stream for telecoms operators to make up for their declining revenues from voice communications, which still make up the bulk of their revenue,” the OECD report said.
“Broadband remains one of the main growth areas for telecoms firms and one of their key challenges, looking ahead, will be to decide how much and how soon they should invest in next-generation networks, such as fibre-optics, rather than continue their investments in traditional copper networks,” it said.
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