Aussie Broadband Satisfaction & ACCC Measures Internet Speed

Alongside a report into internet download speeds by the national consumer watchdog, Aussie Broadband is expected to ‘raise some eyebrows in the ISP sector’ after the internet provider top the customer satisfaction charts, marking the company’s first win.

Customer satisfaction for Aussie Broadband earned a rating of 88% in the Roy Morgan Internet Service Provider Customer Satisfaction Report was well ahead of TPG Telecom Tribrands iiNet (78%) Internode (78%), and TPG (76%), as well as Vocus Communications, owned iPrimus at 74%.

According to CEO Michele Levine, ‘the ISP market has typically had relatively lower levels of customer satisfaction compared to other industries’.

Efforts by Aussie Broadband highlight how ‘smaller ISPs catering to select client bases can raise the customer satisfaction bar for larger national competitors’

Curiously enough, winners in the ISP Customer Satisfaction Reports generally have ratings between the high 70s and low 80s, which in any other industry would not even make the top-five.

Aussie Broadbands rating ‘demonstrates to the industry that greater customer satisfaction is very possible’.

Managing Director, Phil Britt credited Aussie Broadband staff dedication to its customers for winning the award.

‘It’s a real honour to see that our customers across Australia agree’.

It comes as the Australian Consumer & Competition Commission (ACCC) highlights that differences in RSP download speeds are growing, identifying Optus as delivering ‘the highest percentage of maximum download speeds during the busy evening period’.

According to the ACCC Measuring Broadband Australia report, all RSPs delivered average NBN download speeds of between 76 per cent and 87 per cent of maximum plan speeds during the high-demand evening hours in August 2019.

‘We are seeing significant differences in download speeds during busy hours between RSPs offering NBN broadband plans,’ ACCC Chair Rod Sims said.

Sims encourages consumers ‘to do their research’ and ‘compare the busy hour speed claims made by RSPs with their real-world performance’.

‘Consumers should be able to trust RSPs to meet their advertised speed claims.’

Unfortunately, the report also reveals that consumers ‘can never make full use of their plan speed even outside busy hours’ and it’s apparently NBN Co’s fault.

According to the report, speed tests never exceeded much more than 95% of the plan speed, which is the case for all NBN speed tiers.

The current capacity of the system does not allow for 100% speeds due to ‘tags’ being added to consumer digital communications, which prevents communications being sent at the maximum advertised rates.

NBN Co could resolve this by allowing services to run 5% faster before enforcing speed limits, according to the report.

Sims suggests for consumers to contact their providers if promised speeds are not being met, ‘especially if they are paying more in the expectation of faster broadband speeds’.

Fortunately, the proportion of underperforming services dropped from 12.4% to 11.4%.

The report also highlighted the reliability of NBN services, identifying Hybrid fibre-coaxial (HFC) as experiencing the highest average daily outage rate, recording one every two to three days.

Slightly fewer outages were experienced by consumers on fibre to the node (FTTN) connections, despite most lasting for more than three minutes, while the most reliable service was fibre to the premises (FTTP).

Curiously FTTN connections were the original plan proposed by the Rudd Labour government before the Abbott Liberal government altered it to FTTP.

Australia is currently ranked 61 in overall broadband internet rankings according to Speedtest’s global index, putting us ahead of Kuwait and behind Saudia Arabia.