The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) has found that while fixed-line telecommunications customers are receiving generally good levels of service from the National Broadband Network (NBN) some customers were experiencing dips in speeds.
The ACCC’s latest Measuring Broadband Australia report expands the number of retail service providers (RSPs) to include Dodo, iPrimus and Exetel, enabling the report to cover a wider range of price points.
Chair of the ACCC, Rod Sims said the performance of most RSPs remained steady across the busy evening hours of 7pm to 11pm, but TPG and iiNet experienced a decline in download speed performance compared to the previous quarter.
“Download speeds during the busiest hour — when RSP networks were under the most stress during the 30-day testing period — were significantly lower than at other busy times,” Mr Sims said.
“The performance of different RSPs in managing this congestion varied considerably, ranging from 71.8 per cent of the maximum plan speed to as low as 48.3 per cent.”
He said the ACCC believed the drop in speeds may have resulted from retailers migrating their customers to new wholesale NBN products launched in October.
“It is good to see that providers have generally managed the transition to NBN Co’s new wholesale products without too much impact on customers,” Mr Sims said.
“We will await the next round of speed testing results with interest, to see if providers have improved their performance,” he said.
