Australia's Shockingly Low Ranking In Global Internet Speed Assessment

The national broadband network (NBN) project has been a contentious issue since its inception. 

While the roll-out is still underway, it seems as though the delay in getting the network off the ground has seen Australia slump to 50th place in terms of global internet speed.

A study by Akamai, titled The State of the Internet, lists South Korea, Norway, Sweden, Hong Kong, Switzerland, Finland, Singapore, Japan, Denmark and the US in the top ten.

That puts us behind places such as Kenya, Russia and Hungary.

In 2007, Kevin Rudd pledged to install the fiber-optic network into just about every home and business by 2017, with a cost of $43 billion.

The hefty price-tag attracted criticism, which eventually morphed into Malcolm Turnbull's stripped-back approach.

This entails the use of the current copper wire infrastructure instead of completely new fiber optic connections to the house. 

However, issues in development have meant that the cost has blown out to $51 billion and completion delayed until 2020.

For those who've already had the NBN installed during the roll-out, the speed of the internet has raised another huge issue, with reports on social media that people have experienced extreme slowness and drop-outs.