Every Australian gamer knows the feeling. You jump into an online match, check your ping, and see a number that would make a Korean or European player cry. You download a 100GB game update and go to bed because it’ll take all night. You experience a dropout mid-match because your FTTN connection decided to take a nap.

The NBN has improved things. Let’s acknowledge that. Five years ago, much of Australia was on ADSL2+ connections that couldn’t reliably stream video, let alone compete in online games. The situation is better. But “better than terrible” and “good” are not the same thing, and Australian gamers are still structurally disadvantaged in online play.

The latency reality

Physics doesn’t care about your NBN plan. Australia is far from everywhere. The minimum ping from Sydney to servers in:

• Singapore: 80-100ms
• Japan: 110-130ms
• US West Coast: 150-180ms
• EU West: 250-300ms

For games with Australian/Oceanic servers — VALORANT, Counter-Strike 2, League of Legends, Fortnite — east coast players typically see 10-30ms. That’s perfectly playable. Perth adds 50-60ms on top of that because the servers are in Sydney.

The problem is games that don’t have Australian servers. Smaller multiplayer games, niche competitive titles, and new releases often launch with US and EU servers only. Oceanic servers come later, if at all. In the meantime, you’re playing at 150ms+ and hoping the netcode is generous.

The download speed issue

Australia’s average fixed broadband download speed hovers around 55-65 Mbps according to Ookla’s Speedtest Global Index. That puts us roughly 60th globally. Behind Romania. Behind Thailand. Behind countries with a fraction of Australia’s GDP per capita.

For gaming, download speed mostly matters when you’re installing or updating games. Modern game sizes are enormous — Call of Duty is over 150GB, Baldur’s Gate 3 is 120GB, and day-one patches regularly add another 20-50GB. On a 50 Mbps connection, downloading 150GB takes roughly seven hours.

In Korea or Singapore, the same download takes 15 minutes.

This is a quality-of-life issue more than a competitive one, but it adds up. Australian gamers spend more time waiting for downloads, are more likely to play games with smaller file sizes, and are less likely to try a new game on a whim when “giving it a go” means committing to an overnight download.

The consistency problem

Speed and latency averages hide the real issue: consistency. Australian broadband — particularly on FTTN connections, which still serve millions of homes — is unreliable during peak hours.

Between 7pm and 10pm, when everyone in the neighbourhood is streaming, browsing, and gaming, FTTN connections often experience significant speed drops and latency spikes. A connection that delivers 50 Mbps and 15ms ping at 2pm might deliver 25 Mbps and 40ms with intermittent spikes at 8pm. For competitive gaming, inconsistency is worse than consistently mediocre performance because you can’t adapt to conditions that keep changing.

FTTP connections are significantly more stable, which is one of many reasons the NBN’s original all-fibre plan would have been transformative for Australian gaming. But that ship sailed years ago, and the current multi-technology mix means performance varies dramatically from house to house.

What’s improving

More game servers in Australia. The trend is positive. Cloud gaming infrastructure from AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud has expanded in Australia, making it easier for game developers to spin up Oceanic servers. More games launch with local server support than five years ago.

NBN technology upgrades. The program to upgrade FTTN connections to FTTP is ongoing, with millions of premises eligible. If you’re on FTTN and eligible for an upgrade, do it. The improvement in consistency alone is worth whatever the installation cost is.

5G as a gaming option. Telstra’s 5G home internet service delivers low-latency connections in covered areas. For gaming specifically, 5G can outperform FTTN in both speed and latency. Coverage is limited to capital cities and some regional centres, but where it’s available, it’s a legitimate gaming internet option.

What’s not improving

Geographic distance. This one’s permanent. We can’t move the continent closer to server farms. The best we can do is advocate for more games to include Oceanic servers and for the industry to treat our region as a standard deployment target rather than an afterthought.

Regional inequality. Gamers in rural and regional Australia face significantly worse internet than their capital city counterparts. Fixed wireless and satellite connections make competitive online gaming essentially unviable. The gap between metro and regional internet access is one of the biggest equity issues in Australian gaming.

The practical takeaway

If you’re an Australian gamer in 2026, the single best thing you can do for your online experience is get the best NBN connection available at your premises. FTTP if you can. Wired Ethernet from router to gaming device. Choose games with Australian servers when possible.

It won’t fix the fundamental disadvantages of geography. But it’ll make the parts you can control as good as they can be. And in competitive gaming, eliminating the controllable variables is what separates a frustrating experience from a playable one.