RAW DATA: TrueNet December 2014 - NZ Broadband Speed Accelerates in 2014

The average NZ broadband speed improved by 34% in 2014, from 10Mb/s to 14Mb/s.  The acceleration is caused by increasing uptake of faster Cable, VDSL and Fibre services. 

With the recent publication of Chorus [NZX: CNU] customer numbers for each technology; the published data from MBIE on total fibre connections; combined with total market share of each ISP, TrueNet can now publish a reliable NZ wide speed calculation.

(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.)

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The average NZ broadband speed improved by 34% in 2014, from 10Mb/s to 14Mb/s.  The acceleration is caused by increasing uptake of faster Cable, VDSL and Fibre services. 

With the recent publication of Chorus customer numbers for each technology; the published data from MBIE on total fibre connections; combined with total market share of each ISP, TrueNet can now publish a reliable NZ wide speed calculation.

NZ Weighted Average Speed
TrueNet measures Broadband speed from homes and small businesses, taking tests every hour of every day from over 450 Panelists throughout New Zealand.  

To be able to report on performance by ADSL versus that of Fibre, TrueNet maintains enough Panelists for each technology, and location to provide a reliable measure of performance.  This is ideal if we compare, for example ISPs in Auckland on ADSL, or all-NZ by VDSL, but unfortunately cannot be used to create an all inclusive NZ wide speed index.

Demand statistics for each variable is necessary for publication of a reliable NZ wide performance.  We now have quarterly information on market spread by technology to add to market data by ISP and location.

In 2012, all connections were either ADSL or 15Mb/s Cable, this changed with the options of:

• Fibre was first offered as 30 or 100Mb/s, and is now available at speeds up to 1000Mb/s.  As can be seen in Chart 1, the number of users with higher speeds are increasing, enabling the average to reach 43Mb/s.
• Cable products included 25Mb/s, then later 100Mb/s, and now 130Mb/s.  We believe the distribution of products sold now average speeds of 37Mb/s.
• VDSL is able to achieve speeds much faster than ADSL, and is now averaging 24Mb/s.
• ADSL continues to average 10Mb/s.

TrueNet Panelists offered new services for TrueNet testing from late 2012 on VDSL, then in 2013 on Fibre.  The chart below shows Fibre and VDSL once we collected sufficient Panelists for each technology to report.

Chart 1: Weighted average speeds in New Zealand

The New Zealand average speed was stuck at 9Mb/s from the time TrueNet had sufficient Panelists to measure reliably in March 2012.  However in the last 12 months increasing demand for Chorus supplied VDSL & Fibre, as well as other Local Fibre Companies connections, has led to improved averages every quarter.  

Further to this, much faster average speeds on Fibre and Cable, with a small improvement to VDSL, all lead to faster broadband in NZ.   ISP high speed connections as well as the introduction of 200Mb/s Fibre, 130Mb/s Cable, and better VDSL connection practices, have all increased the average speed achieved in NZ.

The first migrants from ADSL to other technologies were within the cities.  These were typically the best ADSL connections especially VDSL, leading to an apparent slowing of ADSL.

Weightings to calculate a speed for all of NZ use known technology market size from Chorus, MBIE data, as well as ISP market shares calculated using Consumer's annual survey for 2013.

We have estimated the product split of Cable connections because we do not have accurate data from Vodafone.  The weighting estimate is unlikely to significantly impact the total average speed, but could impact the average Cable speed in charts 1 & 3.

Consumer completed their survey 12 months ago, so it excludes ISPs that have grown quickly since then, ie Bigpipe and Flip.  However, we believe this is a good market share representation, any errors are most unlikely to impact our final result.

Limitations of the Data
Any analysis of a sample requires assumptions that may reduce the reliability of the data, but TrueNet has endeavoured to reduce the inaccuracies by using:

• reliable measurement - our equipment rarely fails
• Sample sizes suitable to the variances of results, we ignore any doubtful results
• Very large measurement samples (TrueNet has completed over 130 million tests)
• reliable sources for weighting - Consumer, MBIE and Chorus.

We are aware that we could improve, but we doubt the improvement would be visible due to our panelist selection process.

Evening Peaktime Speed
During the evening, congestion appears on some networks more than others (see our Time of Day analyses each month).  Comparing speeds during the peak hours of 8-10pm, the performance is slower, but the improvement between 2013 & 2014 is only slightly less (31%) than the all day NZ average (34%).

Chorus provided TrueNet with the opportunity to report an accurate all-New Zealand speed through its willingness to share relevant data with us.

It is Chorus partnership with the ISPs that has resulted in a range of consumer oriented high speed broadband services based on their existing copper network, as well as the new UFB Fibre network.  The resultant acceleration of demand and uptake for these services shows as a strong positive trend in the black line of Charts 1 and 3.