Big three ISPs continue to dominate speed tests

TrueNet's latest report finds the three largest ISPs (Telecom, TelstraClear, Vodafone) continue to top its independent speed tests. 

The company was recently appointed the Commerce Commission's second broadband tester.

Its principal, John Butt, reports on the latest results:

In this March report TrueNet measures the experience consumers' have while surfing the Internet from their home computers. TrueNet probes based in ISP customers' homes, report that browsing performance remains the same for most ISPs, and file download speed consistency is improving.

TelstraClear Cable is now best at both browsing as well as file download performance.

Browsing Performance
We measure the download speeds of ISPs customers who have volunteered to have TrueNets probes placed in their homes. Each probe's results are averaged over a whole month, then the median probe performance is recorded for each ISP.

TelstraClear Cable remains the best overall by a significant margin, but TelstraClear DSL (the most common type of broadband connection) has slowed down. Vodafone and Telecom are showing little change in time taken to download a web page, and their customers are experiencing the quickest download speeds of all our DSL volunteers.

Amongst the slowest performers Snap improved, but still retains last place, Slingshot and Orcon have both slowed significantly while WorldxChange is slowing a little.

Speed by Time of Day (File Download)

Variations in file download speeds (also known as Throughput) are a good indication of the capacity ISPs make available to their customers. Consistent speeds indicate sufficient capacity for peak and off-peak use times.

TrueNet measures the speed of a file download every hour on every probe; and then averages the speed for all downloads for each ISP measured at the same hour throughout the month. (that is over 600 tests per datapoint on the graph below)

We noticed that TelstraClear Cable changed settings for most probes on 21st March to raise the off-peak speed from 15Mb/s to about 17Mb/s. Most of their customers now get better than their advertised 15Mb/s almost all the time. We show these results compared to TelstraClear Cable's advertised speed.

DSL speed is dependent on copper cable distance from the exchange to the customer, and thus ISP can have minimal influence the maximum speed to each of their customers. ISPs advertise their service using the words "Full speed" or "Maximum" or "Optimised" to explain the maximum speed a line can achieve. For DSL we compare hourly performance with the average maximum for each ISP.

This chart is provided as a visual way to identify when file downloads slow down for ISPs, most can be seen to slow during the peak usage period after 6pm.

The Table below demonstrates that for the month of March, Telecom, Snap & WorldxChange maintained better than 95% of their the average maximum speed recorded joining TelstraClear Cable meeting our target. Note: Vodafone dip below 95% only during off-peak hours such as at 6am and 9am, remaining better than 95% during the evening peak hours.

ISP: Busy Period Speed as % of Advertised Speed
TelstraClear Cable: 97%
Telecom: 97%
Snap: 96%
WorldxChange: 95%
Vodafone: 94%
Slingshot: 91%
Orcon: 89%
TelstraClear DSL: 76%

We have less than five probes for Maxnet, Inspire and Actrix, we need more for these ISPs in order to publish their results. TrueNet's target is almost 60 probes per major ISP and we need more volunteers for all ISPs. To volunteer click here.

With the support of the Commerce Commission, our volunteer growth has escalated, we expect about 100 new probes to be included in the April report. We are looking for a further 100 - 150 volunteers. 

You can volunteer here.