STRONG RESULTS FROM BROADBAND MONITORING 

Sydney, 5 November 2018: Internet Service Providers (ISPs) monitored by the competition regulator have exceeded the performance promised to customers – delivering 102.3% of the advertised speed of the services they provide.

Communications Alliance welcomed today’s quarterly ACCC Broadband Monitoring report, which confirms that service providers continue to provide high speeds to their customers

The ACCC report showed that the six service providers included in the study delivered between 82.1 and 88.4 per cent of the maximum plan speeds during the evening busy period – an improvement on the previous quarterly result.

“But if we measure performance against the more relevant metric – the speeds that service providers promise in their advertisements - the results are even more encouraging,” said Communications Alliance CEO, John Stanton.

“The service providers achieved an average of 102.28% of their advertised speeds (excluding the one provider that does not advertise typical busy hour speeds).

“This is an excellent result – up from 99.9% in the previous quarter – and shows that customers are receiving the service performance that has been promised and they have purchased,” said Stanton.

Mr Stanton expressed disappointment that the ACCC chose again to report only against ‘maximum’ speeds, rather than also including advertised speeds.

“This is unfortunate, given that the ACCC has issued guidance – and providers have entered enforceable undertakings in accordance with it – that providers should not make claims around maximum plan speeds, and instead should advertise based on information about ‘typical busy hour speeds.’

The ACCC report correlates with the recent positive Complaints in Content report issued by Communications Alliance, which showed that complaints to the Telecommunications Industry Ombudsman (TIO)as a proportion of services in operation (SIO) for participating service providers decreased to 6.2 complaints per 10,000 services for the period July – September 2018 – the best result for two years.