While Australians are watching an episode of Daredevil buffer repeatedly, it will come as cold comfort to know their friends across the Tasman Sea are probably enjoying the same video, uninterrupted.
On Monday night, Netflix launched its first Australia and New Zealand Speed Index -- a service that measures the primetime Netflix performance of Internet service providers in all territories the streaming service operates. It is not a measure of overall Internet performance.
Australia had an average speed of 2.82 Megabits per second (Mbps) in April, but was firmly surpassed by New Zealand, with 3.17 Mbps. Internet speeds across Europe thrashed the rest, however, with Switzerland earning an average of 4.06 Mbps and Luxembourg 4.01 Mbps.
In a blog post announcing the launch, Netflix wrote that Australia ranked 18th out of the 29 countries it measured in April. New Zealand beat Australia once again, ranking 14th overall.
In Australia, the Internet provider TPG came out on top with an average speed of 3.36 Mbps, followed by Optus and iiNet. Telstra came last managing only 2.23 Mbps. Interestingly, although Optus and iiNet offer their customers an unmetered streaming deal with Netflix, TPG still outranked them.
The streaming service noted high consumer demand, even exceeding the forecasts Netflix provided, would have impacted the performance of Australian ISPs. "We are working closely with these ISPs and expect performance to improve in the coming months," it wrote.
To calculate the index, Netflix says it measures the average primetime bitrate for Netflix content streamed by Netflix members per ISP across all available devices.