RAW DATA: NZ broadband average speed takes off

(TrueNet is contracted to the Commerce Commission to monitor broadband performance. It uses a network of probes attached to 400 volunteers' internet connections to rate ISPs — Editor.)

Click the NBR Radio box for on-demand special feature audio: TrueNet's John Butt on internet speeds

NZ broadband speed continues to increase as more users take up faster broadband services such as Fibre and VDSL.  Although ADSL (copper connections) still command over 80% of total market share in New Zealand, Fibre customer numbers are increasing, and more frequently they are choosing a faster speed than last time TrueNet published this chart.  In TrueNet's measurements to September 2015, New Zealand's average peak Broadband speed increased by over 38% pa to 16.3Mb/s.

Notes:

1. Fibre includes all speeds from 30Mb/s to 1000Mb/s, the Fibre speed is a weighted average speed by the numbers of connections for each speed from Chorus data, we assume a similar trend for other LFC's.
2. Cable connections include 15Mb/s to 100Mb/s, we had to use our website hits by cable users to identify the size of this market because Vodafone doesn't share the detail. The impact of market size estimation is unlikely to be significant to the overall result as Cable technology market share is very small.
3. VDSL connections, (high speed copper connections) have grown faster than Fibre, although fibre is now catching up.
4. ADSL are the slowest connections available, but are gradually reducing in number as early adopters move to fibre or VDSL.  We have observed the average speed of ADSL drop as customers close to the exchange (the fastest connections) are more likely to select VDSL because they will gain a significant increase in speed.

(Click to zoom)

Weighting uses the number of connections of each technology, including weighting within technologies based on speeds where available.  TrueNet's sample size of panelists is large enough to create an average speed for each technology, we weight that result by the number of connections in NZ, per technology, to arrive at a NZ wide average speed.  

TrueNet's weighted average speed is based on speeds during the busy hours of 8pm to 10pm daily, so represents the speeds ordinary New Zealanders get on their standard home connections.

We have included October results (using September weightings) to show the impact of the Vodafone Cable network upgrade, which was completed on 2 October 2015, and shows as a sudden improvement in our data with the average speed increasing further to 17.4Mb/s.

Our average speed excludes all corporate connections, focusing on home and small business connections.