A fresh perspective has been added to the OECD broadband rankings commonly used to benchmark New Zealand’s network capabilities — and that perspective isn’t flattering.

Akamai ranks New Zealand a low 44th in the world for the percentage of high broadband connections, the percentage of connections of 5Mbit/s or greater speed. When simple broadband of 2Mbit/s is included in the total, New Zealand climbs to 38th.

Akamai’s broadband speed rankings
Country % >2Mbps Q4 07

• Global average 55%

1 South Korea 93%
2 Belgium 90%
3 Switzerland 89%
4 Hong Kong 87%
5 Japan 87%
6 Norway 83%
7 Tunisia 82%
8 Slovakia 81%
9 Netherlands 78%
10 Bahamas 74%
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24 United States 62%
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38. New Zealand 50.41%

Nick.