The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) has revealed that the National Broadband Network (NBN) services’ fixed-line reached a new performance high in February.
The ACCC, which monitors speeds quarterly for the benefit of consumers, said in its Measuring Broadband Australia – Report 13 (June 2021) that retail service providers achieved between 86.8 and 99.1 per cent of plan speeds across the major NBN fixed-line plans during the busy evening hours of 7pm to 11pm.
This is the highest result since the ACCC began its monitoring program in 2018.
Commissioner at the ACCC, Anna Brakey said the latest results suggested the NBN was performing well and retail service providers were largely delivering what consumers expected and had paid for.
“The performance gap between larger and smaller telcos narrowed in February,” Ms Brakey said.
“Internet service provider, Exetel improved the most, as its download speeds reached 98.7 per cent of plan speed during the busy evening hours, up 8.8 percentage points since the last report.”
She said the results suggested that a broader range of retailers, not just those that directly connected to the NBN, were able to achieve close to full-plan speeds, which was good news for consumers and competition.
“This points to a further maturing of the broadband market,” Ms Brakey said.
The Report also provided a first indicative view on the performance of very high speed NBN plans called Home Ultrafast.
“In February, consumers on Home Ultrafast NBN plans experienced average speeds between 608 and 745 Mbps,” Ms Brakey said.
“Between 7pm to 11pm, performance fell by 23 per cent on average compared with the day’s maximum,” she said.
“We encourage consumers who are weighing up whether to upgrade to a very high-speed tier to consider the value of these services relative to their normal daily usage.”
The ACCC’s 57-page Report can be accessed online at this PS News link.
