In August, Shadow Communications Minister, Malcolm Turnbull, lauded New Zealand's broadband plans compared to Australia's NBN.

Communications Minister, Senator Stephen Conroy, promptly shot down the comparison, noting New Zealand's broadband will offer much slower download speeds compared to Australia's.

Australia also ranked lower overall in the IDI sub-categories which includes ICT access, use and skills compared to New Zealand.

Another topic which the Measuring the Information Society 2011 report looked into was ICT pricing.

The ICT Price Basket (IPB) index, which compares prices of fixed-telephony, mobile-cellular telephony and fixed-broadband Internet services to determine affordability of ICT in each of the 165 countries measured.