The latest Measuring Broadband Australia report indicates 12.4 per cent of consumers are continuing to experience badly underperforming broadband services.
The report, released by the ACCC earlier this week, says those included in that figure "rarely come close to reaching their maximum plan speed"; achieving less than 75 per cent of advertised speeds.
“We now want to see more action from both NBN Co and retail service providers (RSPs) to help the more than one in ten connections that simply do not perform to their plan speed,” said ACCC Chair Rod Sims.
The ACCC has identified in-home wiring issues being a major contributor - issues that can be fixed with a site visit from a technician. The average download speeds on the NBN network in Australia over the busy hours during May were:
- 100/40 services, 85.3 Mbps
- 50/20 services, 41.3 Mbps
- 25/5 services, 22.4 Mbps
- 12/1 services, 10.7 Mbps
The testing took place using a sample of 1095 volunteers.
FTTN A Fizzer
The latest report also includes Fibre-To-The-Curb (FTTC) connection speeds for the first time, which were generally in line with Fibre-To-The-Premises (FTTP) connections and HFC. Unsurprisingly, they were significantly better than for Fibre-To-The-Node (FTTN), a much-maligned connection technology that involves increased use of copper lines that can run over several hundred metres and result in speed bottlenecks, particularly where the line is in poor condition.
The difference between FTTC/FTTP and FTTN is plain to see. The following from the report shows overall download % of maximum plan speed (all hours).
- FTTP: 90.8%
- FTTC: 88.9%
- FTTN: 80.6%
- HFC: 90.5%
Back in 2017, a Joint Standing Committee on the National Broadband Network warned much of the NBN FTTN work done to that point will likely require substantial upgrading in the short term.
The ACCC is continuing to look for volunteers for the Measuring Broadband Australia program. Mr. Sims says consumers whose service provider is not currently included in the ACCC reports in particular are encouraged to sign up. Testing is carried out through the use SamKnows "whiteboxes", supplied free of charge, which are capable of measuring fixed-line broadband connections of up to 1Gbps.
The full Measuring Broadband Australia, Report 6, August2019 can be downloaded here.
