Optus fastest yet again according to ACCC NBN speed report

Alex Choros - Managing Editor + Group Telco Editor

Last updated 21 May 2020

The ACCC has put out its ninth Measuring Broadband Australia report, which sees Optus maintain top spot for real world NBN speeds for the third consecutive quarter. Optus customers were found to receive 89.3% of their plan's maximum speeds during peak hours (between 7pm and 11pm) putting the telco ahead of TPG, Aussie Broadband, Telstra, and more.

The report currently now covers ten major providers - Aussie Broadband, Dodo, Exetel, iiNet, iPrimus, MyRepublic, Optus, Telstra, and TPG. For the first, it now also includes Vodafone. Here's how they stacked up:

Average percent of max. download speed

	Overall	Overall excluding under performing connections	Peak hours
Aussie Broadband	87.3%	90.0%	86.1%
Dodo	83.7%	88.7%	82.5%
Exetel	88.3%	88.9%	87.0%
iiNet	85.7%	90.9%	83.9%
iPrimus	83.7%	88.7%	82.5%
MyRepublic	84.5%	88.0%	82.9%
Optus	90.1%	91.7%	89.3%
Telstra	85.2%	90.6%	83.9%
TPG	88.0%	90.8%	86.7%
Vodafone	84.2%	87.6%	83.0%

Performance fluctuated this time around, but only by a small amount. In almost every case, performance gains or losses were under 0.6%. Dodo and iPrimus were the only exception to this, with a 2.5% download speed increase during busy hours.

When you exclude under-performing connections, Optus still leads the pack in terms of download speeds, but by a smaller margin.

Once again, the ACCC found that some consumers continue to experience under-performing NBN services that never achieve close to their advertised plan speeds. While there has been improvement, the report shows one in five Fibre to the Node (FTTN) customers on either an NBN 50 or NBN 100 plan aren't getting the speeds they pay for. This, however, is down from one in four in the last report.

New to the Measuring Broadband report is data on streaming performance. The report looks at the proportion of NBN services on NBN 50 plans that are able to run two simultaneous high definition Netflix streams.

Proportion of NBN 50 services able to support two HD Netflix streams

	Overall	Peak hours
Aussie Broadband	100.0%	100.0%
Dodo	100.0%	97.0%
Exetel	100.0%	100.0%
iiNet	100.0%	100.0%
iPrimus	100.0%	97.0%
MyRepublic	81.4%	78.4%
Optus	100.0%	100.0%
Telstra	99.2%	99.2%
TPG	100.0%	100.0%
Vodafone	97.4%	97.4%

By and large, most NBN 50 plans were able to support two simultaneous Netflix streams, even during busy hours. MyRepublic was the only provider with notable issues in streaming performance.

The Measuring Broadband report also tracks outages that last over 30 seconds. Here's how providers stacked up:

Aussie Broadband: Approximately 0.43 daily outages
Dodo: Approximately 0.26 daily outages
Exetel: Approximately 0.23 daily outages
iiNet: Approximately 0.14 daily outages
iPrimus: Approximately 0.26 daily outages
MyRepublic: Approximately 0.19 daily outages
Optus: Approximately 0.46 daily outages
Telstra: Approximately 0.15 daily outages
TPG: Approximately 0.19 daily outages
Vodafone: Approximately 0.49 daily outages

While the overall report looks like a win for Optus, it's always worth taking these results with a grain of salt. The testing was conducted throughout February 2020 across just 1,270 NBN connections. All but 29 of these households have a connection with one of the ten providers featured in the report.

If you're after a new NBN plan, check out our guide to plans from the providers mentioned in this report.

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.

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