Akamai runs one of the world's largest streaming video and content delivery platforms, giving it an interesting insight into the capabilities of the world's broadband internet networks. As such Akamai's quarterly 'State of the Internet' report has been one of the key global broadband benchmarks over the last few years, offering statistics such as the average download and peak download speeds for various nations.

As you might expect, Australia doesn't fare too well in the Akamai reports as our hotch potch broadband infrastructure lags further and further behind some other countries. What's really interesting is that Australia's average download speeds actually fell a whopping 23 per cent from December 2011 to December 2012 -- down to 4.2 Mbps.

The drop is certainly not part of a global trend, as the global average rose 25 per cent in the same period. The drop was also mirrored in Australia's average peak connection speeds which fell 28 per cent to to 23.4 Mbps despite rising 35 per cent globally.

So what's going on here? The Akamai report doesn't explain the decline but it does note that it is "unexpectedly high, especially given the progress being made on the National Broadband Network (NBN). Although there have been some challenges in keeping up with demand for service, these deployment delays should not be driving such a significant decline in average connection speeds".

It's easy to take these figures on face value and assume Australia's legacy broadband infrastructure is just crumbling. But to understand these figures, you have to keep in mind that they only relate to people streaming content from the Akamai network -- which supports services such as BBC iPlayer, iTunes, Netflix and iView. So you're not getting the equivalent of nationwide speedtest.net results, but rather a glimpse into the average speeds of people streaming from those services.

When you look at the graphs below, it's clear that the annual drop is mostly due to a massive spike in Q4 2011 (the green lines on the graphs covers Australia and New Zealand). If you compare the points from Q3 2012 to Q3 2011 you'll see a slight rise. So the so-called speed drop does look like a statistical blip -- albeit a massive one which isn't reflected in other regions. In terms of average download speeds (the top graph) there's a major spike in Q4 2011 and then drop in Q1 2012, the largest spike in any region for the last five years. You can see the same spike in average peak speeds (the bottom graph), but almost all regions experienced a similar spike in Q1 2009.

Assuming the speed of Australia's broadband connections didn't actually fluctuate this wildly, it's possible what we're looking at is a change in the way Australians streamed content from Akamai's major partners -- the legit online video services. It's possible the global Q1 2009 spike in peak speeds is related to the return of popular TV shows after the 2007/08 US writers strike. Yet if that was the case, you'd expect there to be a dip in 2008 rather than a spike in 2009. You'd also expect the impact to be limited to the US, as outside the US most people were sourcing these shows from BitTorrent rather than Akamai's major partners.

Alternatively peaks and troughs in speeds could be related to people's use of BitTorrent clients constantly running in the background on their computers. When they scale back their BitTorrent use, their legit streaming performance rises.

Another explanation for Australia's recent peak and then drop is that we might have seen a surge in the takeup of fast broadband connections in the city, raising the national average even though individual download speeds didn't change. This may have been followed by a surge in slow broadband connections, perhaps in regional areas, bringing down the national average. Fixed wireless and satellite deployments could also be influencing the figures. Australia supposedly saw a 56 per cent drop in high-speed broadband connections in the 12 months to Q4 2012, but this is probably distorted by the fact Akamai redefined "high-speed" as 10 Mbps rather than 5 Mbps.

None of these theories really seem to satisfactorily explain what we can see on these graphs, but the fact Akamai's figures are tied to video streaming services makes me think that there's some link to the battle between BitTorrent and its legit alternatives.

How would you explain the unusual spiked and dips in Australia's Akamai statistics?