ACCC says NBN outperforms ADSL

The National Broadband Network is significantly outperforming ADSL services, according to a new report released by the consumer watchdog.

The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission’s Measuring Broadband Australia report reveals NBN plans provide download speeds three times those recorded for ADSL plans.

NBN plans sold with a maximum speed of 25 megabyte per second on average achieved a download speed of 22.7 mbps during the busy hour.

The internet service provider with the fastest broadband this quarter was TPG followed by Aussie Broadband, iiNet, Optus, Telstra and MyRepublic, with the latter picking up speed considerably on the last quarter.

Overall, 69 per cent of all tests continued to achieve download speeds of above 90 per cent of maximum plan speeds, while 7 per cent of tests recorded less than 50 per cent of the maximum.

“We are pleased that the Measuring Broadband Australia program is being taken very seriously by internet service providers and is delivering noticeable improvements to customers’ broadband speeds,” ACCC chair Rod Sims said.

“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.”

In each report, the ACCC explores a particular issue in more depth, with the focus of this one on the difference in busy hour broadband performance between NBN urban services and NBN regional services.

Urban services, which are those provided in towns with a population of over 10,000, receive higher speeds than regional services, but the difference is not significant, with those in urban areas receiving 84.8 per cent of maximum speeds on average compared with 83 per cent per cent of speeds in regional areas.

In April 2017, the federal government announced that it would fund the ACCC to implement an independent national broadband performance monitoring and reporting program to provide Australian consumers with accurate and independent information about broadband speeds through to 2021.