New Zealand’s Internet Speeds Will Soon Be Way Faster Than Australia

Adding to the long list of achievements they constantly hold over Australians—legalising same-sex marriage, welcoming refugees from Manus Island, being really good at rugby—New Zealand will soon be able to claim one more victory. From October, the Kiwis will have much much faster internet than their Aussie neighbours.

NZ telecommunications company Chorus has announced its high speed broadband service, stretching out across most metropolitan areas of the country, will now reach 1 Gbps. For some perspective, even with the NBN, Australians have comparatively snail-paced downloads within the range of 25Mbps to 100 Mbps. It is expected that about 20 percent of NBN users will one day enjoy 1Gbps speeds—but that glorious day is still very much theoretical at this point.

The new service will begin from October 1, with Chorus CEO Mark Ratcliffe saying in a media statement that he was "delighted" to see New Zealand "catapulted up the league tables of broadband speed rankings."

Chorus will offer download speeds approaching 1,000 Mbps and uploads of up to 500Mbps—the equivalent to uploading 25 high resolution images to Facebook in under five seconds, or downloading 25 songs in a second.

Meanwhile, for Australians it's almost impossible to imagine these speeds. Starting a download before you go to sleep and hoping to wake up with it (nearly) complete has become a national ritual.

Some Australian internet service providers, frustrated with the speeds offered by the NBN, like Lightning Broadband, do offer similar 1 Gbps speeds—but are only available in specific metropolitan trial areas. Since 2013, Australia has dropped from 30th place to 60th in the global internet speed rankings. South Korea ranks first.

Of course, advertised internet speed isn't everything. For the average user who isn't into gaming or downloading heaps of movies, 1 Gbps might be almost meaningless. Sure it sounds good, but you won't be taking advantage of it.

Still, for those Australians frustrated with the limitations of the NBN, this might be annoying news. If it's any consolation, the Kiwis need fast internet much more than we do—there aren't that many other ways to pass the time.

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