New Zealand’s broadband is only meeting the needs of today’s application threshold according to a new study just released. The global study of broadband quality sponsored by Cisco ranks countries on a broadband quality score (BQS) derived on research based on 24 million speed tests done in 66 countries via speedtest.net. The test focused on download speeds, upload speeds and latency – the delay that happens as information is routed around the net.

According to this test New Zealand ranks 35th out of the countries tested – meeting the needs of today’s application threshold, with just nine countries in the category of “ready for tomorrow” (an increase on only Japan in that category in 2008). The UK is only slightly ahead of NZ at 31 – although this ranking is adjusted to 25th after researchers combined these results with the broadband penetration in individual countries to create its broadband leadership index (BLI). On that scale New Zealand ranked 32nd.

The report provides ample evidence as to why it is important that the government progresses its rural broadband plan announced earlier this week. The rural broadband discussion document is available as a download (pdf), with responses due by the end of October.

The summary pages and appendix of the Cisco report provides informative reading for those interested in what’s happening in the broadband world – You can download the summary report and its appendix and the full study.