TPG takes out third NBN speed-monitoring report

TPG has taken out the third National Broadband Network (NBN) speed-monitoring report, with MyRepublic again coming last across most categories.

According to the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) report [PDF], TPG delivered 88.7 percent of its maximum plan speeds overall and 88.4 percent during busy hours for downloads.

It was followed by Aussie Broadband — the winner of the previous report — at 87 percent overall and 85.8 percent in busy hours; iiNet, at 85.9 percent overall and 84.8 percent in busy hours; Optus, at 84.9 percent overall and 84 percent in busy hours; Telstra, at 83.9 percent overall and 83.5 percent in busy hours; and MyRepublic, at 83.5 percent overall and 82.1 percent in busy hours.

TPG likewise scored highest on average upload speeds, providing 89.2 percent of its maximum plan speeds overall and 89.1 percent during busy hours.

Aussie Broadband was ranked second for upload speeds, providing 87.8 percent overall and 87.5 percent during busy hours; iiNet was third, providing 87.1 percent both overall and during busy hours; MyRepublic came fourth, at 85.3 percent overall and 84.6 percent in busy hours; Telstra was fifth, providing 83.2 percent overall and 83.1 percent in busy hours; and Optus came in last, with 82.8 percent overall and 82.7 percent in busy hours.

“Industry says it is working hard to contact customers whose NBN connections aren’t able to deliver the maximum speeds of their plan,” ACCC Chair Rod Sims said on Monday morning.

“We note NBN Co has reported that congestion has increased slightly in recent months. Our results suggest that ISPs not featured in this report could be contributing to this, as the overall results featured in this MBA report do not show an upward trend in congestion.”

Telstra again had the lowest latency, at 12.1 milliseconds overall and an average web page-loading time of 2.4 seconds. TPG’s overall latency was 12.4ms; Aussie Broadband’s was 13.5ms; Optus’ was 14.1ms; iiNet’s was 16.2ms; and MyRepublic’s was 17.1ms.

Average page-loading time for iiNet and MyRepublic was 2.6 seconds; Aussie Broadband clocked 2.7 seconds; Optus 3 seconds; and TPG 3.2 seconds.

The “very busy hours” metric — which takes the fifth-lowest hourly average speed measure during the 120 busy hours of the period — again saw poor results, with Telstra pulling down the highest score by providing just 71.9 percent of maximum plan speeds.

Aussie Broadband followed, providing 69.3 percent of maximum plan speeds during very busy hours, then TPG, at 69.2 percent; Optus, at 68.4 percent; iiNet, at 66.9 percent; and MyRepublic, at 61.1 percent.

Upload speeds during very busy hours were best delivered by TPG, at 82.5 percent, followed by Aussie Broadband, at 81.4 percent; iiNet, at 80.5 percent; Telstra, at 78.9 percent; Optus, at 77 percent; and MyRepublic, at 76 percent.

Aussie Broadband co-founder and MD Phillip Britt last week told ZDNet that the speed-monitoring reports — in conjunction with NBN’s Focus on 50 wholesale pricing discount and the mandate that RSPs advertise typical evening speeds — is “really what cleaned up the big boys behaving badly” in terms of provisioning enough connectivity virtual circuit (CVC) capacity.

“Ultimately, they weren’t provisioning enough CVC; they basically were going to get caught with their pants down,” Britt told ZDNet.

“NBN needed to fix the customer experience. NBN ultimately blinked first, rather than the providers provisioning more bandwidth.

“It eroded our competitive advantage overnight, because we were provisioning enough bandwidth, and suddenly everyone was on this level playing field from a bandwidth perspective … we’ve still come out on top [of the second ACCC report], but the whole congestion thing was a massive selling point for us, and customers were churning to us in droves because of that. The churn in market these days is not as strong, I think because of that.”

The ACCC’s first fixed-line broadband speed monitoring report, published in March, had followed the consumer watchdog forcing Telstra, Optus, TPG, iiNet, Internode, Dodo, iPrimus, and Commander to compensate tens of thousands of customers for not providing them with the NBN speeds they were paying for.

The ACCC is still seeking volunteers for the broadband speed-monitoring program in order to increase the pool of data.

The AU$6.5 million speed-monitoring program will take place over four years, with SamKnows appointed in December last year to monitor speeds thanks to the government providing funding.

The ACCC has also said it would need an additional AU$6 million in government funding to extend its speed-monitoring program to fixed-wireless services.

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