NBN speeds improve for most, but some are getting left behind

Most customers are seeing their NBN speeds improve across the board, but there are still a small number of Australians beset by internet services much slower than what they paid for.

The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission's third Measuring Broadband Australia report revealed that 69 percent of the tests it conducted achieved download speeds above 90 percent of the maximum plan speeds they were advertised.

However, seven percent of recorded tests came back with speeds less than 50 percent of the maximum.

ACCC chair Rod Sims said it was encouraging to see RSPs compete for speed supremacy and that its reports were delivering good results for fixed-line customers on the NBN.

“Industry says it is working hard to contact customers whose NBN connections aren’t able to deliver the maximum speeds of their plan."

“We encourage customers who aren’t getting the speeds they expected to contact their internet service provider to see if they need to change plans. We will continue to closely monitor the progress of industry in remedying this issue.”

The report found that the fastest ISP during the last quarter was TPG, followed by Aussie Broadband, iiNet, Telstra and MyRepublic, which the ACCC noted had improved considerably since the last report.

The tests took place in August 2018 measuring 950 NBN and ADSL services from 15 ISPs with 171,000 download speed tests.

This quarter, the ACCC took a closer look at how speeds were affected during the busy hours between 7pm and 11pm, finding that speeds were down by just 1 percent compared to the average.

“We note NBN Co has reported that congestion has increased slightly in recent months. Our results suggest that ISPs not featured in this report could be contributing to this, as the overall results featured in this MBA report do not show an upward trend in congestion,” Sims said.