Steam ISP stats lay Australia's dire internet connectivity bare

Australians are well aware that the country's internet situation is pretty dire, but a new feature in Steam Stats really drives the reality home.

Steam download stats allows users to check average download rates for all ISPs per region, which is handy if you're looking to sign up with the faster provider. TransACT offers the highest average download rate among the country's Steam users at 9Mbps, while M2 offers the lowest at 4.3Mbps.

It's best to keep in mind that the larger providers' average stats may be affected by their greater coverage in rural areas, hence Telstra's lower rating.

Here's the rundown:

Swipe to scroll horizontally

Network	Average Download Rate
Telstra	7.1 Mbps
Optus	8.1 Mbps
Internode	5.6 Mbps
TPG Telecom	5.1 Mbps
M2	4.3 Mbps
iiNet	5.1 Mbps
Primus Telecommunications,AU	4.7 Mbps
Exetel Pty Ltd,AU	5.3 Mbps
AAPT	6.1 Mbps
TransACT Capital Communications Pty Limited,AU	9 Mbps

Which is useful information, but it hurts to compare to the United States, where Comcast offers an average 25.8Mbps. The worst performing ISP is CenturyLink, which comes in at 6.8Mbps–a pinch above the average Australian download rate of 6.6Mbps.

Then again, we are only 1.8 per cent of Steam's global traffic, with 1.5 Petabytes downloaded over the last seven days. That's tiny compared to the United States' 16.8PB,

Cheers, Ausgamers.

Shaun Prescott is the Australian editor of PC Gamer. With over ten years experience covering the games industry, his work has appeared on GamesRadar+, TechRadar, The Guardian, PLAY Magazine, the Sydney Morning Herald, and more. Specific interests include indie games, obscure Metroidvanias, speedrunning, experimental games and FPSs. He thinks Lulu by Metallica and Lou Reed is an all-time classic that will receive its due critical reappraisal one day.