
The ACCC will no longer audit NBN provider speeds, the regulator announced today, alongside the release of its 33rd Measuring Broadband Australia report.
The new report will be the last, with ACCC Commissioner Anna Brakey saying performance levels between providers are now much more similar compared to when the report was established in 2017.
"Recent results from our broadband monitoring show that there is less differentiation between providers’ performance than when we published our first report in 2018 and considerable improvement in overall performance since the program’s inception," said Brakey.
Brakey pointed to NBN Co's wholesale changes that removed capacity-based pricing from all plans as one of the factors in improved performance. In early Measuring Broadband Australia reports, average download speeds were between 80% and 85% of maximum plan speeds in busy hours. This has now risen to close to 100%. In the final report, households recieved 99.4% of their plan's download speeds during busy hours, on average, across all providers.
The report had sibling telcos Dodo and iPrimus, along with Leaptel, in equal first place as the fastest NBN providers. Customers on all three providers were found to recieve 102.3% of their NBN plan's maximum speeds during the busiest hours of the day (between 7pm and 11pm on Monday to Friday). Dodo and iPrimus had a slight edge on Leaptel, however, with their customers recieving 0.3% faster speeds during all hours.
TPG followed, with customers found to get 101.9% of plan speeds in busy hours, with Exetel in third, with 101.6% of plan speeds in busy hours.
The report monitored 10 telcos, including Aussie Broadband, Dodo, Exetel, iiNet, iPrimus, Leaptel, Optus, Telstra, TPG, and Superloop.
Here's the full breakdown of how they all performed:
| Provider | Busy hours | Overall | Overall excluding underperforming connections |
|---|---|---|---|
| Aussie Broadband | 95.2 | 95.7 | 100.3 |
| Dodo | 102.3 | 102.8 | 104.8 |
| Exetel | 101.6 | 102 | 106.1 |
| iiNet | 99.5 | 100.1 | 102.3 |
| iPrimus | 102.3 | 102.8 | 105.5 |
| Leaptel | 102.3 | 102.5 | 104.7 |
| Optus | 101 | 101.6 | 104.7 |
| Superloop | 101 | 101.5 | 104.6 |
| Telstra | 99.5 | 100.1 | 105.6 |
| TPG | 101.9 | 102.6 | 103.1 |
Compare NBN 50, NBN 100, NBN 500, and NBN 1000 plans from the providers in this report:
The Measuring Broadband Report also includes Fixed Wireless NBN plans and Starlink plans. The average busy hour download speed for Fixed Wireless Plus plans rose slightly from last quarter. They increased from 98.8Mbps to 98.4Mbps. Meanwhile, Starlink customers achieved an average of 199.1Mbps during busy hours, which is a small bump from 197.3Mbps last quarter.
As always, it's worth remembering the scale of the ACCC's testing. The results come from a month-long testing period during December last year across 1,156 NBN connections. All but 227 of these households have a connection with one of the 10 providers featured in the report. The ACCC reports a 95% confidence level in its results.
While the Measuring Broadband Australia reports are ending, the ACCC says it will continue to closely monitor broadband performance data it collects through ohther sources.
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Alex Choros
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