Internet may be awful overall but that measurement is strictly download speed to Cloudflare's speed.cloudflare.com test site. Since they have a local data center those speed can be great even while performance to the rest of the world is bad.

Why would you think it's awful? What are your sources? Almost everyone has access to gigabit connections. I myself have access to a 6 gigabit connection. Almost every house has fibre

A couple of people I know that live there have complained about it.

Also I've read many comments from digital nomads over the years.

Of course this is just anecdotal.

Ah understood. Perhaps bad customer service. In general we have amazing fiber penetration via https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultra-Fast_Broadband which is a government initiative. Much better than the NBN in Australia for example (where I'm from originally) and cheaper too. My gigabit connection is also just under $50USD a month

Could also be that this stuff is relatively new?

To my knowledge most of the fiber roll-out was completed in Nov 2019 (https://www.crowninfrastructure.govt.nz/fibre/ufb-programme/) and they have already started upgrading network speeds to 6 gigabit and beyond. That hasn't had as much availability yet although improving in large cities. It's also about $150 USD so less people opt for it.

It's a misunderstanding.

Oceania suffers from peering/latency issues related to being very far from other continents (+ monopolies). Anything local is fine.