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As I write this, my Google Chrome browser wheel is on spin, and it’s been like this for the past five minutes. I ask myself; why is Australian internet so bad? This is 2024, why is Australia so far behind other developed countries when it comes to internet speeds.
Waiting on Australian internet happens a lot. It doesn’t matter if you’re in downtown Sydney, or the far reaches of the Outback, you’ll find slow internet speeds regardless.
What’s worse, is that Australia has the most expensive internet services of a developed country in the world.
So what’s the deal? Why do Australians suffer like this? In this guide, I’ve not only explained why slow internet is still an ordeal for Australians and how you travelers can get around it (well, the best you can!).
Why Is Australian Internet So Bad?
Australia’s poor internet speeds are awful for a number of reasons. According to the Global Speed Index, Australia’s broadband is ranked #70 in the world with a download speed of 75.99 mbps, according to information from October 2024. This is down 15 places from October 2023.
To put that into perspective for you, the global average download speed is 94.52 mbps, so Australia is seriously lagging.
There are a number of reasons for this, including:
Geography and population density
Australia is a vast country with a small population spread out over a large area. This makes it expensive to build and maintain internet infrastructure, especially in rural and remote areas.
Outdated infrastructure
Australia’s internet infrastructure is based on old copper telephone lines, which are not designed for high-speed internet.
In 2009, the Coalition Australian government launched the National Broadband Network (NBN) project to upgrade the country’s internet infrastructure.
The NBN plans to offer broadband services to homes and businesses through a mix of hybrid fibre-coaxial connections.
However, the NBN has been plagued by delays, due to political issues and cost overruns, and it finally rolled out at the end of April 2024.
Despite this, Australians were so fed up waiting for the NBN rollout, many have sought other solutions for faster internet speeds and (more on that to follow).
Limited competition
The Australian internet market is dominated by a few large internet service providers, which is why broadband is so expensive.
Network congestion
Do you remember the days when every member of your household being on the internet at the same time slowed it down? This is still an issue in Australia!
Many Australians face interference and slower speeds during peak hours (evenings between 7 pm to 11 pm).
Government policies
The Australian government has been slow to invest in internet infrastructure and has not done enough to encourage competition.
It Infuriates Is For Two Reasons
1. We live in a wealthy country. If I can get high-speed internet for $20 a month and unlimited data in the hills of Chiang Rai Thailand, I should be able to get online in Cairns!
2. Even though I understand our country is vast and unpopulated, so there will be places internet won’t be, I’m infuriated that I have to pay over $330 a month for a substandard service. If you give me quality less than par with the hill tribes of Thailand then charge me a price that matches that.
How To Get Faster Internet In Australia
So that’s why the internet connection in Australia is useless, but the good news if there are ways to get around this.
The way to get around this is to switch from broadband to 5G data. Most Australians are doing this now as they are so fed up waiting for a decent WiFi provider.
Not only does 5G work for mobile phones, but you can get portable modems that basically offer WiFi capability.
Although, you don’t have to get hardware, you can just sign up for a mobile plan.
The big competitors in offering 5G mobile data in Australia are Telstra, Optus, and Vodafone.
Here are my tips for getting the best internet in Australia:
- Optus is cheaper, but Telstra has the best coverage. Keep reading for our experience with Optus…
- If you’re going rural, which let’s face it is most of the country, Telstra is your only option.
- Believe it or not, Optus service people are nicer than Telstra. Optus customer service gives me angina, Telstra customer service gives me a heart attack.
- We had a pre-paid Telstra mobile broadband that we use in the areas we can’t get connected to Wi-Fi. Optus still charge you whether you get service or not, our data bill then goes through the roof. We had an extra $100 on one month in the outback when we couldn’t connect at all.
- There are flexible plans with Optus meaning, if we know we’re going to go way under our data allowance, or over, we can phone Optus and change the data limits and pro-rata the cost. This is extremely handy. I do thank you for this Optus! It’s just a headache to maintain. So just phone and say you want to upgrade or downgrade your usage for that month.
- You need a friggin degree to read a phone/data bill. It just does not make sense and impossible to know what you are being charged for nor how much data you have used. Sorry no tips here.
- Do as much of your work as you can offline.
- Use free Wi-Fi in hotels and cafes as much as possible. I’m seriously laughing so hard here as I type that. Do not hold your breath, nor rely on it. We don’t even bother connecting any more when we see it advertised. But, you might get lucky so you might as well try. If you do then quickly do as much downloading of your apps and things you need.
- Our friends at Travel Outback Australia reviewed an iSavi Wideye iSatHub as an option for people to get connected when they are out bush away from Telstra or Optus service. Read more about it here.
Our Experience With Optus
We were in Yallingup, a coastal town not far from Margaret River. Margaret River is a decent size town and very touristy.
The facilities should be in place. We stayed nearly two weeks, thinking we could mix up fun exploring with a bit of online work at the Caravan Park.
But, we couldn’t connect. It was one of the worst services we had experienced in Australia – that is in the places where you get service.
When we signed up to Optus – because they were cheaper – they told us they had 95% of the coverage that Telstra did.
They don’t. We’ve travelled the country to verify it.
We had to buy a Telstra mobile broadband device to cover us for that long stretch across the Top End where an Optus signal could not be found.
If you want to fail in business in Australia, travel the country and then choose Optus as your internet provider.
The Truth
I know there will be some people who’ll like to tell us Australian internet is not so bad and we’re ungrateful and traitors for writing this BUT, this is the truth.
We’ve travelled the entire country to find the proof and we speak to many travellers who say the same thing.
It’s no secret, internet in Australia is a joke!
We were chatting about it the other night with another Aussie who said something really interesting, yet quite frightening:
“In the past, countries who have kept up with infrastructure have slipped into first world status and thrived. The future is not highways and transportation routes, but internet highways. If Australia doesn’t start getting committed and investing in fixing this we are going to slip way behind”.
It just took me 15 minutes to hit the publish button on this post. Yep, we’re in Yeppoon, it’s the school holidays, and the internet sucks!
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Oh good f***ing grief, you’re absolutely right. I’ve been in Australia since January, moving up the coast from Melbourne to Cairns, and I have been struck dumb by how awful the internet is out here. I’m a writer, and need a decent internet connection for my work too, but judging from how bad things are in this country, I should probably have spent three months down an abandoned coal mine in Siberia – where I would no doubt have got a better connection. Also, staring at the mad scrawlings of long dead Russian coal miners would be more fun than watching The Project, but that’s another story. In the twenty or so places that my fiancé and I have stopped, one or two have had decent, reliable, fast internet. Everywhere else has been plagued with slow down, disconnections, and horrible 3G signal. And we’ve hardly been anywhere rural. As I write this I’m in an apartment on the Sunshine Coast using a Dodo broadband connection that is more temperamental than Jeremy Clarkson after three pints of gin. The connection should be 14mbps. I’m getting 0.6. Laughable.
I go home in seven weeks, and am already dreaming about returning to the UK, and my unlimited fibre optic connection at 70mbps (costing all of $30 a month). Australia may have all these lovely beaches and the kind of weather most people in the northern hemisphere only dream about, but it also has the kind of internet every other bugger in the world had ten years ago. Given the choice between a suntan and an entire season of Game Of Thrones downloaded in an hour, I know which one I’m going for. Tony Abbott is an even bigger c*** than Joffrey.
This is hilarious Nick! thanks for making me laugh. I think I need to follow you to the UK to get some of that fibre optic connection!
I couldn’t believe how slow the internet was in Australia either, I expect much more! We are from the USA and currently living in Chiang Mai, where we are spoiled with the internet!
Hannah, I’m thinking to moving from Australia to Thailand this yr. Typically how much is data for internet over there. How much do you spend per month on this? Thanks heaps
Since moving to Australia from the UK in late November, I’ve been pretty shocked at how terrible the internet situation is over here. Long gone are the days of free data allowances and being able to download a university powerpoint in seconds- I now have to wait sometimes up to an hour to download lectures I need to use to teach my students- it’s crazy! And this is from someone that is living near the city centre of Brisbane…I can’t imagine how bad it is elsewhere in the country.
Lizzy from Nomad Notebook
Just embarassing. I’m so tired of having to download something four or five times because it keeps dropping out mid-download. Optus is laughing though as they get to charge me excess fees when I go over because of it.
Yup, internet in Australia is beyond appalling. We’ve been in Australia for three months now, and I was hoping we’d get used to it but nope, it still annoys the crap out of us.
And what’s with the data caps? It’s like saying: ‘oh sorry, you’ve just run out of TV for the rest of the month.’
Oh, and by the way; Telstra isn’t much better. Just more expensive. We first bought a Vodafone sim, which meant we had no phone reception anywhere but pretty decent 3G – and now that we’ve switched to Telstra we have phone reception almost everywhere but the crappiest 3G EVER. And not just in rutal areas, in Sydney I couldn’t even check facebook or open a web page – much less try to upload pictures for a new blog post.
Sigh.
Ugh! That kills me that you can’t get connected properly in Sydney. It’s so embarrassing. It’s not like we have huge population numbers so if other cities around the world can still have fast speeds with their high pop numbers, we should be able to.
The data caps are annoying and just a way for them to rort us with extra fees as they know people will go over.
I actually forgot to mention that in the beginning we had a Telstra post-paid mobile broadband device, (but not on a plan) We only lasted with them for a month because our first bill was around $800, but we had no way of monitorning our data. It took 4 weeks to actually register for online monitoring, so by the time we could see how much we were using it was too late. They were actually breaking the law here as you have to be able to monitor it and they have to let you know once you start reaching your data caps, and they failed on both occasions. Because of this they wiped the excess charges straight away. As they knew they were breaking the law. It’s so pathetic.
Very surprised that internet in parts of Australia is so bad… and I agree with you even in remotest Thailand you can get great connectivity. Often just for the lunch in a restaurant you get free wifi in Thailand…. I do hope things get better in Australia.
Goodness gracious me, preaching to the choir here.
I’ve just recently moved to the UK for a gap year, and oh my goodness, the internet here is futuristic. In comparison. The number of times a day that I say “its so fast” and “wow that was quick”… I’m pretty sure my roommate wants to punch me. I’m actually becoming less grateful, I am starting to complain when I have to wait at all… But I simply have to remind myself that living on a farm 10km from THE ENTRANCE (FOR CRYING OUT LOUD) is on satellite internet because there is no data connection, not even 2G for just basic calls and texts. You wonder how on earth such a country could live on this!
While reading this, I got so worked up in agreement that I decided to ask my Spanish friend to read the post you wrote, she couldn’t believe her eyes! One hundred percent accurate.
Speaking of phone companies, In Australia I have a phone plan with Telstra – I had 1GB of data with 200 texts and a similarly small amount of calling credit, which cost me $70 per month. In the UK, I am with Three, and spend only £25 ($50 near enough) for UNLIMITED EVERYTHING, plus coverage in a bunch of other countries at no extra cost as well. LIKE WHAT IS ACTUALLY WRONG WITH AUSTRALIA. To be completely honest with you – it is enough to convince me to live in the UK for the rest of my life!
Now I’m ranting too, but it was so refreshing to read a post about the trials and tribulations of living in the ‘promised land’! Thanks so much for posting this 🙂
http://talias-travels.tumblr.com/
Oh wow! It just gets worse! Thanks for sharing with me your experiences. Australia really needs to up its game or so many people will be living in another countries instead and then tourists won’t even come here! I can’t believe you had to have satellite internet 10km from The Entrance!!! That is shocking!
So happy you have found a fast and cheap deal in the UK. If it doesn’t get better for us on the Gold Coast we’ll be moving to the States. Enjoy your travels over there
First World Problems.
My internet in Sahara Desert – southeast Morocco back in 2006 was much better than the Internet I got in Australia in 2015. After traveling in Central and South America, I got frustrated of arriving in Australia and having non-free – slow internet. I couldn’t believe it. Although I loved the country of course and Australians are for sure one of the most social people in the world. Greetings from Ouarzazate! (the OZZ city – for airport code) 🙂
Yes! Australia is an amazing country and the people are wonderful. That’s one reason I get so annoyed with the internet as I know we are letting ourselves down. When you get into small towns as well and speak to the locals and the small business owners they are struggling a lot due to internet. Even kids in schools are limited because they can’t get connected. It’s so frustrating.
We’re so happy you had a great time down here regardless!
I’m keen to see if the fishing line between two tin cans method might speed things up a bit… ;P
Lol! I think it might!
I am nodding my head as I read this Caz.
Last week I was in Bali using the free WiFi at the hotel and had faster coverage than what I do at home in Perth in a suburb 5 minutes from the city centre using Telstra with unlimited data.
Bring on NBN – though will it really be any better?
Who knows? Can we trust anything these politicians do or say?
I live in China and while it’s not quite as bad as you’ve described above, it’s pretty freakin’ annoying! While sites hosted in China are super fast, anything hosted outside the country is purposefully slowed down. Websites shouldn’t be FASTER with my VPN. For example, Pinterest isn’t blocked in China, but I can’t even load one photo without my VPN. When the VPN doesn’t work, there is literally no point in the internet. Half the time I can’t watch youtube or Facebook videos, and FORGET about uploading anything to Youtube. Phone VPNs are really fickle, so half the time I can’t even get on Instagram. How am I supposed to build up my Instagram following if it takes 20 minutes to post one photo? At least it’s cheap. I’m only spending $30 for 6 months. I can’t imagine paying over $300 a month. That’s crazy!!!
Oh yeah, China sounds like a headache! It will be some time before we can visit there again. Being a digital nomad comes with its challenges.
Certainly agree about Telstra being the only one to use in Oz! We have the same issues outside of Melbourne. Currently travelling Europe and finding the free WiFi rather slow and frustrating, but we were in Poland and had the most amazing WiFi ever! Totally free at a truck stop – loaded tonnes of my photos up to dropbox whilst having a cheap, but delicious, coffee! Go Poland!
Poland is going on the list!!
Definitely do Craig! Poland is a winner all round. We just went up the cable car from Chamonix, 3872 metres.. stunning views… stunning day… and I planned to skype my husband from the top so he could say happy 10th Birthday to our daughter… no free or paid wifi! Grr.. I know I ought have my own data set up, but it is so costly. Great day all the same. It does make one sad though to realise just how much we want, expect and need internet connections these days though!
I can’t believe how bad Australia’s internet is, it’s truly unbelievable. I guess I should count my lucky stars and not complain about what I have here in NYC. With that said, you two are so efficient and productive, I never notice that you struggle with slow internet.
We’ve gotten good at managing it, but it’s still so frustrating. We can’t wait to stop the travel so we can be more productive.
I feel your pain. I never understood why people complained about internet when I lived in Melbourne but now I’m in Tassie and I totally understand.
I won’t use Telstra because I’ve had such bad experiences with their customer service. I used to work for them and they’d have all these grandiose corporate plans and I’d think — or you could just stop outsourcing your customer service. I have a prepaid mobile plan because I’ve got stung with every post paid service I’ve had.
I’m currently staying with Mum so have to use Dodo. OMG. There are three of us in the house and only 2 of us can use the wifi at a time! If I have to use it for work, I sit up after 2am so I know the service won’t cut out and I’m terrified to do any kind of financial transactions in case it cuts out in the middle of transferring money.
How annoying. One of the reasons we didn’t originally go with Telstra was because I thought their customer service was appalling. After awful experiences years ago, I decided I’d avoid them at all costs. In hindsight now, I wish I broke my own promises!!
It’s appalling that people have to stay up to 2am to get stuff done. It was like that for us in Bright. We’d have to wait until 11pm to start work.
It is absolutely ridiculous!!! I have just returned from 8 weeks in SE Asia, most of that time in Cambodia and EVERYWHERE I went had free wifi! Even an overnight bus from Phnom Penh to Siem Reap I was connected!! Now I’m in a hotel on the Sunshine Coast and they offer 30mins free then another 30mins for $5, 2hrs for $10, 24hrs for $18 or a whole week for $85!!! How ridiculous!!
Oh geez!! It just gets worse. This annoys me so much as travellers will stop coming to Australia soon if it doesn’t improve. I find too many Australians say, yeah but Australia is so wonderful. Just disconnect and enjoy your holiday. Maybe so. But the world is so digital driven now. Many people travel for various reasons and many can work remotely while they travel. If our country keeps sticking it’s head in the sand and trying to rely on the fact that we’re an amazing country so it doesn’t matter, we’re going to lose out and fall way behind the rest of the world. It concerns me greatly.
I’m in Australia right now and decided that since I was here for a week in the Blue Mountains that I might as well stick around and work here for a few weeks since I didn’t have to be anywhere else…why not? Well – had I read your post before I had made this plan I probably would have said “I’ll just go back to the US and work”. But I didn’t – and now I”m here struggling with internet and I’m in Sydney suburbs! So – I do feel your pain…even if it’s only a little bit.
It’s baffling to me why Australia (and New Zealand) are so far behind on connectivity. I lived in Vietnam 7 yrs ago and had much better internet. crazy.
Totally admire you for dealing with it and love that you wrote about it as trying to run an online business without connectivity is horribly stressful – I understand.
Good luck! I’m outta here in 2 weeks and back to good internet where I’ll be able to upload video and photography once again!
Oh I’m so sorry Sherry. That’s awful. It’s so frustrating for us, but I get even more frustrated that people who visit here from other countries have such an awful time with it. I wish we could offer better! I saw some of your photos on Instagram – awesome. Love the Blue Mountains.
OMG. This. This This. We have just been home (Gold Coast) for the past 2.5 months after spending a long time overseas and the internet has given me the shits! Free WiFi was easier to find in a town, an hour from the Amazon forest in Peru (true story) than it is in “developed” Australia. And, I fully hear you about Optus. We bought a 3G dongle when we first arrived and boy was it crap! We used Telstra for a while after that but it was hard to get work done when you’re counting megabytes. Finally, we’ve ended up working from a coworking space because we just got over not being able to get stuff done! It’s a joke.
This post is so accurate. I’m exhausted just reading what you have had to endure to bring us your amazing posts. You’ll be pleased to know that Tony’s all over it and has a grand plan for 2019 ….. NOT: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jmD-uFgcvbU
I had similar issues around the country and a number of heated phone calls with Telstra customer service after being “overcharged” several times. Thank GOD for the ability to screen shot. They don’t have a leg to stand on when you produce the evidence. Still these are hours and days wasted on hold ….you never get them back. So infuriating.
Firstly, I feel ya. When we first moved to Australia nearly 8 years ago it took us forever to find a broadband provider that wasn’t insanely expensive. However, since then it is SO much better, so now whenever I go back on holiday every year I really appreciate their current internet situation even though I now live in London so am used to super fast broadband. When we lived there we had a 2GB limit per month…for a family of four with two kids at school needing internet for homework etc.
However, you need to remember that Australia is HUGE and most of it untouched. The majority of the population live in the cities and major towns in the southern half of the country. For you to be able to get fast internet all over the country would cost an insane amount for the providers and hardly anyone would use it as most people don’t roadtrip and work. You’re in a remote part of the world and you need to appreciate that. In Australia it’s just understood that when you’re in woopwoop you forget about the internet, unless you’re with Telstra and happy to pay their prices (which few people do). Hell, even the big mining companies don’t have internet and phone coverage etc when they’re up north, they use satellite phones for everything (which are insanely expensive and only used in emergencies).
I know you’re just venting and angry etc, but please *please* don’t judge Australia just on their internet. They know they’re behind and have a lot of catching up to do, but you need to understand how absolutely huge the country is and how expensive it would be to make sure every rural location had top notch internet and phone signal. It’s only in the past twenty years or so that the country has even been accessible for most normal people travelling from overseas.
Maybe in future if you wanna roadtrip Aus again, make sure you plan it around the main cities, and set up an out of office response for when you’ll be in a remote location so potential business partners know that you’re not ignoring them (that’s what I do).
Also even though the majority of internet is slow, I love how most cafes and restaurants in Western Australia offer free wifi, far more offer it there than in England, some of it’s pretty fast too, you just gotta find the right cafe or library and stick to it.
I do understand where you’re coming from, but at the same time I think you need to be a little more understanding on how huge and empty the majority of Australia is.
C x | Lux Life
PS: Only just remembered you guys are from Sydney, so ignore half that comment 😉
Yeah I’m glad you realised finally that we’re Aussie and from Sydney because this comment really annoyed me and showed you don’t know us too well. We get how big Australia is, and this post speaks a lot about places like Cairns, Margaret River (which by the way is touristy), Broome and Sydney. We actually don’t even talk much about the remote places, we’re talking about places where there is civilisation.
And if you spend a bit of time on our site you’ll clearly see that we LOVE Australia and we’ve promoted it intensely for the past 18 months and have inspired and encouraged THOUSANDS of people to visit here and will continue to do so forever. I appreciate that you realised we are actually Australian, but perhaps it is noted for you in the future to read posts properly and to look more into a person’s site and story before commenting.
We’re more than just venting here. We love and care about our country immensely. We want it to be great and we want people to visit here. This is a serious issue that affects tourism in a lot of ways. Tourism is one of our major industries in this country, if we can’t give travellers what they need digitally and at a fair price, they won’t come here. How much does that affect our economy?
But, it’s also small businesses who are affected. Since writing this post, we’ve had small business owners writing to thank us for making this issue known and for using our voice in a way to help. It’s not just venting. One lady in particular told me she has to pay $1,000 a month to cover her internet costs. This is outrageous! That’s seven people she has to put into beds each month just to cover that. Do you think that is fair or good for our economy? Perhaps you need to be a little more understanding about that.
There is also the fact that our students will soon have to do their standardized testing online (I’lll leave that vent for another time) What’s the issue here? Many of them can’t even get online. We spoke to the community members of a small town (considered rural by Telcom except it’s only 2 hours from Bundaberg, hardly rural) Their children’s education is being impacted because of the lack of internet coverage. This is not a problem?
I’m not sure if you know too much about the leaders of our country, but they are useless and spend all their time bickering and arguing rather than implementing things that will help grow our country. We are a wealthy nation and we have the money to improve the services. Just because people live in rural areas doesn’t mean they should be cut off. Another example of a small remote area just west of Alice Springs – it would cost Telstra $20,000 to put a tower in, which would serve quite a large region and help those trying to live a good life there. But, they refuse to do it, so those people have to pay huge dollars to use satellite internet as well.
It’s unacceptable. We rant because it’s annoyed us, but also because we believe our country is better than this and more should be done to help travellers, yes, but mostly the small businesses that are the lifeblood of an economy and who already struggle with many rules and regulations placed upon them by the government not to mention things they have no control over like drought, cyclones and floods. Internet should be one less issue for them to worry about and our country should be doing more.
I understand what you’re saying, but there’s no need to get so angry at me. Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, even if you don’t agree with it. Are you saying that only people who are regular readers of your site are allowed to comment, unless it’s a glowing comment telling you how amazing your post is? I understand what a pain it is, trust me, I had to do my year 12 TEE’s with only 2GB of internet a month, and I KNOW how shitty your leaders are, but at the same time I understand how hard it must be to get the entire country connected with good internet given how huge it is compared to other countries. Even here in the UK we have shitty or little internet and phone coverage in remote areas of the countryside, and we’re a teeny tiny country!
Australia has always been backwards, in every part of the digital age, and I just can’t see it changing any time soon. Heck, they’re still asking for engineers and traders from other countries, despite the mining boom being pretty much over and all of the miners going back to the cities and working in trade (because of the miners coming back there’s a massively saturated market in WA with electricians, and now loads of electricians are out of work), and yet they’re not asking for digital and online/tech specialists who have years of experience in other countries who are further ahead than them in digital and tech! If they want to catch up with the rest of the world, then they’re gonna need to get these people from overseas to go and work in Australia and train Australian workers so they’re up to scratch with the rest of the world. It’s not just a simple issue with them not putting in a new tower, it’s an issue with their immigration policies too. How can they advance in the online/tech/digital space when they have both workers and leaders with an extreme lack of experience in it?
Oh, and sorry for not reading the post properly, it’s pretty long and full-on, and I had just got home after a 24+ hour flight from Australia to London and was pretty jetlagged. I make that journey and visit Australia every year because I love your country so darn much and miss it like crazy, even if it did take me 8 hours just to upload a 5 minute video to Youtube using free wifi.
I was annoyed because your comment was clearly written with a total lack of understanding of who we were and the point we were coming from. I welcome your opinion, as I do anyone, I just ask that you make sure you read things properly before you do (including the other comments which spoke about the difficulty of getting connected in places like Sydney), otherwise your I’m not really open to hearing your comment when you talk to me as if I’m a tourist in Australia. If someone commented on an article of yours when it was obvious they didn’t read the post properly, I’m sure you’d be kinda annoyed too. It’s like having a conversation with someone in real life who clearly is not really listening to you.
I care about my country and I want things to change. Australia has not always been backwards. In fact, our progress considering where we started is amazing. Australia can fix this internet issue, even if it means hiring people from overseas.I don’t think getting the entire country connected is the answer as most of it is uninhabitable. I’m talking about the civilised places, like Sydney that has big populations. I don’t believe making excuses and burying our heads in the sand is the answer.
Thank you for loving our country so much and I hope you recover from your jet lag soon. Take your shoes off and go stand on the ground for 30 minutes. The earthing will help you recalibrate
Ouch! Sounds like a huge pain in the butt especially when you rely on the internet for your work. I’m happy to switch off when on holiday but when it comes to working off site the internet is invaluable and needs to be reliable. NZ is also a pretty poor performer for internet especially in the smaller, rural towns however I did find that the hotel charges for internet access were minimal compared to what I’ve had to pay in Australia.
The internet is surely Australia’s biggest embarrassment. As an expat blogger not a day that goes by that I don’t suffer at the hands of Australian internet providers. Even the super expensive Telstra dongles are unreliable and have often denied me internet access for several hours at a time. I’ve had better internet connections in Africa!
Having said that, I the NBN I used in Canberra was decent. It was faster, without the usual connection interruptions, than any other internet I have experienced in Australia over the past four years! Why, oh why, are they not prioritising it’s roll-out?
Oh dear!
Not sure if this has been covered in the comments, but I find having ALDI mobile a huge lifesaver. ALDI use the Telstra network (at much cheaper prices) and I just use my phone hotspot when I’m blogging in rural Aus. I gave up Optus a few years ago as it’s just terrible. You can get 4gb of data with ALDI (to use within 30 days) for $45 and when it runs out you get another gig for $10.
Might be helpful!
Great tip! Thank you so much for sharing. I had no idea.
soon enough even the ADSL 2 network will be bogged down with so called cheap unlimited plans that dial up speeds will be here once again.
For anyone who’s stumbled across this post (out of the many awesome posts that are on this site) out of frustration digital nomads have in Australia, try checking out global gig!
It’s $50 for 10GB’s on a month-to-month (with less expensive options) SIM card. I can’t speak to how reliable it is (it’s using the OPTUS network) but it’s cheaper.
They also have international plans as well! Wanted to provide some light in a seemingly dark hole of the internet space in Oz!
Awesome! Thanks for the tip
oh wow! in Moldova (eastern Europe) , where i lived for 20 years , i get such fast internet, it’s crazy. i download stuff with 5-6 mb per second. And the cost is like 10 Australian dollars per month. The same situation is in Romania, where i live currently. Even tough these countries are considered among the poorest in Europe, the Internet is one of the cheaper and faster in the world. Your situation reminds me of how it was here like 12-15 years ago, with dial-up connection , right when the internet was a novelty.
p.s : love this website, it made me decide when our honeymoon. Capetown FTW
Oh so awewsome Ole! You will love your honeymoon!! MAgic place
It might help all digital travellers to understand (one part of ) why Australia’s internet is so limited. There are (currently) only two main undersea nodal points into Australia. One into Sydney and one via Singapore into Perth. 90% of all data must go out (and come in)to the rest of the world through these interchanges.
below is a visual map that might help…(scroll to australia, coloured lines are the main points of data entry.)
http://www.submarinecablemap.com/
Legislative incomptence by our government aside, if all Aussie ISP providers gave unlimited data plans it would create bottlenecks at these points and things would actually be worse.
Good news is apparently Australia will be get two new dedicate undersea interchanges layed sometime in late 2016.
Awesome! Thank you for explaining that to us! Let’s hope the government gets their act together! Wouldn’t that be amazing?
I didn’t know about that, that’s incredible. Bizarre animals, bad connection… what a country!
Whole heartedly agree, I’m an Aussie in Japan. I get 2gb/s for 60 dollars a month. Going back to Aus in December, and even at the Gold Coast finding a hotel with good internet is hard, and you usually have to pay…get it together Aus
We have been ‘trying’ to connect a decent service to our business for almost a year. We have explored all avenues and has just explored a dedicated wireless link after the copper infrastructure is completely useless for business. This too has become a real challenge. We have been given all types of obstacles and excuses why we can’t have good internet. At best our current internet reaches speeds of 2M but at worst it is 0.05M. It tends to err closer to the lower speeds most of the time. Emails take sometimes hours to send or receive and outages for more than 2 hours are the norm.
Our business is in Punchbowl, Sydney Australia. Being in the largest city in Australia doesn’t guarantee fast internet either. We are never going to see the NBN as promised and I believe when we get it we will be very old.
Justin that is so horrible – and you’re in Sydney!!!! We’re now living on the Gold Coast and it hasn’t gotten any better. We finally were able to ditch Optus – and the dramas with them long continued after this post. I certainly would NEVER recommend them to anyone. But, we’ve switched over to Telstra and to be honest, they’re not much better. Our home broadband is not the cable speeds they sold to us, and the connection on our phone rarely goes above one bar. It’s so pathetic.
I really hope they come through with that NBN for you. It sucks to run a business reliant on Internet in Australia. We’re looking forward to travelling the US next year and having way better connection.
OMG I know this is a year ago but I stumbled across this on Pinterest and have been in fits of laughter (and crying from pain). The tips section at the end “Optus customer service gives me angina, Telstra customer service gives me a heart attack” – every point there had me in tears of laughter and sorrow. I know this is a rant but you couldn’t make this stuff up right? I don’t deal with telco’s at all anymore, especially bills. I just ring the Ombudsman for everything as they literally get fined $800 or so (an actual employee told me that) if they don’t resolve it in a week so mostly they just let the bills go, but with internet coverage there’s nothing we can do. I have microwave broadband but you can’t travel with that and I shouldn’t HAVE to set up a private internet system in a 1st world country because the asshat telstra decided not to put enough ports in on my street and because they are sulking about not doing the NBN or whatever childish shit they are all up to. It’s a joke and seriously apparently by the time the NBN goes in it will be out of date.
PS loved your swearing in this… briliant!
I’m in America atm, on wifi, absolutely marvelous.
You mention, “Australia isn’t just Sydney and Melbourne.” Trust me, Sydneysiders don’t have any luck either. In our Potts Point apartment (3kms East of Sydney CBD), we have zero Telstra mobile service, and the Optus service we receive is only H+ on one to two bars at best – but during evenings and weekends, forget it, the towers can’t stand the extra demand.
This is 2016, Australia. Come on!
Interesting, The speed of Internet in Australia seems to be among the highest in the world however. Perhaps because you have such a big country with so few population, it becomes difficult to provide coverage for all areas (especially the ones with less population?)
I was under the impression that everyone in Australia has internet access on their phones. Is it a wrong assumption?
Just arrived in Australia and really shocked about the state of internet. I think the best way for the government is to increase competition and bring international investors.
Yes. Australia has limited competition which is so bad for its citizens! The internet is woeful