We’re prisoners of our data connections. Picture: Foxtel

Netflix has launched a website that measures the speed of your connection, and it’s sure to send some Australians into a spiral of misery.

Fast.com allows internet users to quickly and easily check their download speeds in real time.

“We all want a faster, better internet, yet internet speeds vary greatly and can be affected by other users on your network or congestion with your internet service provider,” David Fullagar, vice president of content delivery architecture at Netflix, said in a blog post.

The move is likely to incense Australians, for whom data speed is an increasingly contentious issue, particularly in rural areas.

Gripes about internet services were behind a spike in complaints to the telecommunications ombudsman in the first three months of 2016.

More than 6000 Australians reached out for help over data speeds, connection delays and unusable services, the ombudsman revealed.

Others have simply accepted it or are resorting to desperate measures to get around the issue.

One of those people is “Telstra data guy” John Szaszvari, who caused a furore last month when he downloaded a gigantic 994 gigabytes on the mobile network’s free data day.

“I have absolutely terrible internet connection, it’s pretty much unusable, so when a day like this comes along it’s rare as hens’ teeth,” the 27-year-old told news.com.au at the time.

“The connection in my street is so degraded it’s almost impossible to get a function out of it.

“Problem is the telephone lines in my area are old and don’t work properly. Imagine having a connection so bad and live with that for two years.”

“The bottom line is I wouldn’t download this if I had a decent connection at home and could stream Netflix properly.

“I have to load the movie, pause for half an hour then buffer, I don’t know if I’d call that streaming.”

In the State of the Internet report for the fourth quarter of 2015, Australia came 48th in the world for average connection speed, at 8.2 mbps (megabites per second), and 60th for average peak connection speed, at 39.3 mbps.

A report by British firm OpenSignal from February revealed Australia has the ninth fastest mobile 4G speeds in the world, behind countries including Romania, Hungary and New Zealand.

We sit 20th in the world when it comes to overall coverage of the 4G network.

In South Korea, which is top of the category, users are given access to a 4G network 97 per cent of the time. In comparison, Australia is on par with Kazakhstan, offering access to a 4G network just 75 per cent of the time.

The rollout of NBN has contributed to discontent, as people experienced teething problems switching over to the high-speed service.

In March, Liberal MP Wyatt Roy was taken to task over the country’s slow and embarrassing internet speeds on Q&A.

Your broadband House of Cards could fall down at any minute. Picture: Nathaniel BellSource:Supplied

“The NBN was going to be a cornerstone investment in the country’s infrastructure to drive the innovation ecosystem that we have talked about but also in the information economy,” said audience member Simon Van Wyk.

“Under the tutelage of the Prime Minister, we have seen the broadband speeds in Australia go from being 30th in the world to now 60th in the world. I’d like to know why the government talks about wanting innovation but seems to be actively undermining the actual ecosystem that was going to drive some of that innovation, particularly outside the capital cities.”

Mr Roy, the Assistant Innovation Minister, said that in his own electorate, Longman — 45 minutes north of Brisbane — 40,000 people had just been switched on to the NBN.

“These are people who had dial-up speed internet. I don’t think there is any point as a country saying you are going to wait a very, very long time for those sorts of people who are excluded from this conversation, not people in this room or this city with good internet connections, but 40 minutes from a capital city with dial-up speeds excluded from the gains you are talking about,” he said.

The popularity of streaming services means data speeds are a very real issue for television viewers all over the world.

Netflix this month also created a “data-saving” feature that gives subscribers tips on how to control the quality of their streams and the amount of data they consume. But the gimmicks won’t do much to rescue a painfully slow connection.

So next time House of Cards freezes on you, take a screenshot and share the evidence.

emma.reynolds@news.com.au