NBN speeds still falling short, ACCC reports

Many NBN customers are still not getting the speeds they’re paying for, despite wholesale price cuts, says the ACCC.

Rolling out the NBN.

A big chunk of NBN customers are still not getting the speeds they are paying for despite cuts to wholesale prices, with the competition regulator saying retail telcos still have some ground to cover on service quality.

According to the second iteration of the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission’s Measuring Broadband Australia (MBA) report, almost 7 per cent of consumers are receiving less than half of the maximum speed promised in their plan.

Overall, 70 per cent of the services tested were able to receive download speeds of above 90 per cent of maximum plan speeds, largely in line with the results of the ACCC’s first MBA report released in March this year.

NBN Co in December cut the monthly access price (AVC) of its 50/20 plan down from $34 to $27, and offered a 50 per cent discount on the connectivity virtual circuit (CVC) price to make the higher-speed plans more economically viable for telcos to push to the public.

The CVC is the price retail service providers pay to move data from the NBN to their networks. The amount of CVC a retail service provider buys impacts the network speeds, particularly at peak usage times.

“While most NBN fixed-line broadband customers are receiving relatively fast internet speeds, including during busy hours, which we strongly welcome, there is still an important number who are receiving poor service,” the ACCC report said today.

The report, which provides performance data of NBN services provided by six major providers, also highlighted considerable disparity in the level of service delivered during the busy period from 7pm -11pm.

According to the report, busy hour average speeds range between 74 and 88 per cent of maximum plan speeds, with Aussie Broadband the best in class and MyRepublic taking out the wooden spoon.

For the quarter, the average download speeds recorded for the busy hours, as a percentage of maximum plan speed are: Aussie Broadband 88.3, TPG 85.6, iiNet 83.4, Optus 83.3, Telstra 79.9, and MyRepublic 74.4.

Overall, 70 per cent of all tests continued to achieve download speeds of above 90 per cent of maximum plan speeds and ACCC boss Rod Sims said that there are areas that need improvement.

“We urge providers to help customers obtain the full speeds associated with the plans they are acquiring,” he said.

“We also expect ISPs to inform customers of the speeds achievable on their network connections, and better match the plans they offer to those speeds.

“While we are pleased to see that most customers are able to get fast, reliable broadband services even during busy hours, we must focus our attention on those who do not have this experience,” he added.

According to the ACCC report, the six service providers can potentially improve speeds by between 1.5 and 9.4 percentage points to improve service quality for those customers currently receiving sub-par broadband.

The ACCC’s broadband monitoring service tested 25, 50, and 100 megabits per second Mbps plans and ADSL services in May 2018. Testing involved around 800 NBN and ADSL services supplied by over 15 telcos, using over 145,000 download speed tests.