As for Australians on Telstra Wholesale hardware, who are pinging above 200 to local servers, Beau says "there are also some routing issues in some of the locations that are causing higher pings than there should be. We have documented this, but for the moment are only able to focus on the issues with the game that are affecting everyone."
"Once we have gotten the 'launch day' bugs all isolated and resolved, we will be able to spread our attention to several other issues affecting the game," Beau assures us. Valve has unofficially taken no responsibility for the problems, with a new post on Steam's Black Ops forum stipulating your requirement to contact Activision support for all matters concerning network and hardware performance.
Well, there you have it! Fingers crossed for a speedy resolution. In the meantime, check out our Call of Duty: Black Ops tweaks and fixes thread for some consolation improvements.