Finally, after a lot of nagging by various interested parties(me included), Australia gets its own Edge server on S3 Amazon, namely in Sydney. This will have quite some impact on delivery of streaming video and audio in the Land Down Under, because they have serious problems playing HD video. An edge server is especially useful for streaming video and audio delivery via CloudFront since those media are served via the closest server in your area.
For Australia, the closest server was until now in Singapore, which is used by many countries, so it was high time for change. It goes to show that if you stamp your foot often enough (for the right causes), you can make things happen. You can read the official announcement here: cloudfront-route-53-add-sydney-australia-location/
Fiberglass network in the making
A new edge server is not going to solve the broadband connection bottleneck, though. But the NBN (National Broadband Network) is working on that issue currently. The Fiber to the premises (FTTP) program is planned to reach approximately 93 percent of the population by June 2021 according to Wikipedia.
When that is fixed, Australia will be able to enjoy HD video for many years to come.
If you are located in Australia, please have a look at our test page and let us know if the HD video plays without stuttering for you:
https://www.miracletutorials.com/streaming-hd-video-test-on-s3-cloudfront/
You can leave a comment on that page to tell you if the edge server in Sidney makes a difference for you. Thank you!
