ACCC taking Dodo and iPrimus to court over misleading NBN speed claims

Alex Choros - Managing Editor + Group Telco Editor

Last updated 23 June 2020

The ACCC today announced that it has started court proceeds against internet service providers Dodo and iPrimus over misleading NBN speed claims. The consumer watchdog alleges that the pair of telcos - both owned by Vocus - made false claims about the typical evening speeds that customers could expect, spanning a period of March 2018 to April 2019.

Typical evening speeds are disclosed by NBN providers in order to give customers a reasonable expectation about what kind of performance can be expected between the hours of 7pm and 11pm. ACCC Chairman Rod Simms says he believes that Vocus used flawed methodology in determining advertised speeds.

"We believe many of Dodo and iPrimus’ NBN customers would have been unable to regularly receive the advertised speeds during the busy evening period of between 7pm–11pm," said Simms.

"It is alleged that the testing methodology determined the ‘typical evening speed’ claims by using only the daily 75 fastest speeds observed across Vocus’ entire network in the busy period, excluding slower speeds where a connection was more likely to be impacted by congestion."

At the start of 2019, Dodo was advertising typical evening speeds of 47Mbps on NBN 50 plans, which ostensibly meant customers never encountered any slowdown. For comparison, Aussie Broadband - a provider renown for solid NBN performance - was reporting typical evening speeds of 45Mbps on its NBN 50 plans.

However, at the time, the ACCC found Dodo and iPrimus some of the worst performing providers in its Measuring Broadband Australia speed testing program. In the May 2019 report, the ACCC found that plans from the pair were achieving just 81.8% of advertised plan speeds during busy periods. For an NBN 50 plan, that works out to be 40.9Mbps.

At present, Dodo and iPrimus both report typical evening speeds of 41Mbps, and the pair are still feature toward the lower end of the quarterly Measuring Broadband report.

This isn't the first time Dodo has been in hot water with the ACCC. In the middle of last year, the provider agreed to refund up to $360,000 to around 16,000 customers over misleading claims that its entry-level NBN plans were perfect for streaming, despite only including 10GB of data at NBN 12 speeds.

Alex Choros

Managing Editor + Group Telco Editor | X | Instagram | Threads | LinkedIn

Alex Choros is the Managing Editor of WhistleOut Australia and an award-winning journalist. He's been writing about consumer technology for over a decade and is an expert on the Australian telco sector, to the point where he knows far too many phone and internet plans by heart. In addition to leading the WhistleOut editorial team, Alex is responsible for ruining the office Sonos with his troubled taste in music.

Read full bio