World Bank Report and Australian Broadband

A World Bank study  on communications around the world is written up in the Australian press.  According to numerous reports Australia is not flattered by the study in terms of broadband comparisons. Australian broadband offers may well be slow but the journalist covering this story has well and truly misunderstood the indicator concerned. What the is reported by the World Bank is the ITU's indicator of international bandwidth per person. This has been interpreted as average broadband speeds for users which is something totally different.  In other words because the UK is an international hub, with a lot of international capacity, they rank highly. But this does not mean, for example, that average broadband speeds are higher in the UK than in France or Japan. In fact the reverse is true. A more accurate proxy for international average broadband speeds per user can be found here. The speeds reflect real throughput rather than advertised broadband speeds but also provide an average for all users who have completed the test in that country. Australia has not been in the top ten for some time.