Many customers stuck at dial-up speed after switch to costly NBN

A SENATE estimates committee has heard peak-time connection speeds were slower under the costly NBN than conventional ADSL broadband.

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IT was supposed to be the high-speed answer to Australia’s internet woes but a growing number of Central Coast customers are complaining they were better off before they switched to the National Broadband Network (NBN).

A Senate estimates committee last week heard peak-time connection speeds were slower under the Government’s costly NBN than conventional ADSL broadband and barely better than the old days of dial-up internet.

Most of the complaints were from new customers in areas such as the Coast where the Government’s stripped-back fibre-to-the-node NBN concept has been launched.

There have been many complaints made by Coast customers against the NBN service.

NBN has blamed service providers for some service rollout issues on the Coast.

However, the NBN this week defended its wholesale network and instead blamed internet service providers — the telco retailers — for not buying enough capacity at peak times.

Under fibre-to-the-node, a telecommunications cabinet is installed on every street and connected to existing copper telephone wires running to each house, rather than installing optical fibre to each property.

NBN chief executive Bill Morrow told the Senate estimates the rollout was a difficult and complicated task.

“We have installed over 1.7 million connections into homes and some of those don’t go as smooth as what we would like,” he said.

NBN Co chief executive Bill Morrow concedes that the service rollout hasn’t gone smoothly.

NBN customers who spoke to the Express Advocate reported peak-time connection speeds of just 1-2Mbps from 4pm onwards each day — about four times slower than they were getting on their old ADSL internet plans and a long way from the NBN’s advertised maximum of 100Mbps.

Maxwell Taylor, of Gorokan, said he used to get an “adequate” connection speed of 8Mbps “day or night” with his ADSL1 plan but has slipped to barely 2Mbps at night on the NBN.

“It’s fine during the day when I’m at work and don’t need it, however, this all changes at night and on the weekend. It is impossible to play any online games or watch any of my streaming services during these peak times,” he said.

An NBN spokesman said it was investigating the issue.

“These investigations continue but many of the reported­ issues are likely to be addressed by some retailers switching on increased capacity to meet demand.”