NBN speeds have again climbed to record highs, with more plans now hitting their advertised maximum speeds as NBN Co announces an extension of fibre-to-the-premises for 300,000 more homes and businesses.
The ACCC’s latest Measuring Broadband Australia quarterly report showed that, in May 2021, NBN fixed-line customers saw on average 98.4 per cent of plan speed during all hours, and 97.6 per cent in the peak hours between 7pm and 11pm. During peak hours, retail plans achieved between 92.2 per cent and 100.5 per cent of plan speed across all plans.
According to ACCC Commissioner Anna Brakey, however, testing shows that some people on very high speed plans – NBN250 to NBN1000 – cannot get speeds over 100Mbps to their connected devices, owing to Ethernet port limitations on some home routers.
“We encourage consumers on these higher speed plans to contact their retail service providers to check that they have equipment that can support their plan speeds.
“We expect retailers to take appropriate steps to assist affected customers on NBN250 plans and above, both when offering these plans and for existing customers who may require replacement home gateways, or the option to move to a suitable plan speed.”
Source: ACCC
Though the number of underperforming plans have decreased from 8.1 per cent in February to 6.2 per cent in May, Brakey says a “persistent cohort” of fibre-to-the-node (FTTN) customers are still experiencing slower than expected speeds, and NBN Co and retailers have dragged their feet on addressing this.
“While it’s encouraging that some of the fibre to the node services we monitor are improving, especially given the additional investment announced by NBN Co last year, retailers and NBN Co need to collectively do more,” she said.
NBN Co announced today that it would be extending fibre-to-the-premises to more than 300,000 homes and businesses currently served by FTTN, allowing them to access gigabit download speeds by 2023. NBN COO Katherine Dyer says the company is on track to achieve its goal of enabling up to eight million premises, or 75 per cent, on the fixed line network to access the highest speed tiers within the next two years.
“We’re very pleased to announce the latest list of suburbs and towns across Australia – from Avalon Beach on Sydney’s northern beaches peninsula to Fremantle, Western Australia – that will ultimately see around two million FTTN premises become eligible to upgrade to Fibre to the Premises and gain access to NBN Home Ultrafast services, on demand,” she said.
Vocus Group, including Dodo and iPrimus, won the “most improved” sticker, with a 5.4 per cent lift during all hours and busy hours compared to the previous report; Vodafone came in second at 4.3, with MyRepublic third at 3.7 per cent.
