Australia tops poll for mobile connectivity
Australia has come out on top of a new poll which measures the ability of countries to connect their citizens to the internet via mobile.
The poll was conducted by the GSM Association (GSMA) and is based on a new tool which ranks countries on four measures: infrastructure, affordability, consumption and content.
Australia’s overall score of 84.7 was the highest amongst 130 countries surveyed, above the Netherlands (84.4), Denmark (83.9), Sweden (83.9) and Norway (83.2). New Zealand also scored highly, coming in at 6th spot with a score of 82.8.
Of the four categories, Australia came out tops for ‘affordability’ and ‘consumer’ readiness and in third place for the availability of content for the mobile internet.
It fell behind on the level of infrastructure build out, coming in at 14th place, though here Australia’s particular geography and demographics may largely explain the result.
The poll was perhaps conducted before the series of mobile outages which have occurred this year, particularly in the Telstra network. They are, however, a reminder of the overall high quality of mobile services in Australia as well as of the centrality of mobile services to the way Australian now conduct their lives and businesses.
