Slingshot network investment has paid off - TrueNet

Commerce Commission-appointed broadband tester TrueNet says Slingshot has jumped up its rankings.

TrueNet principal John Butt says the improved result by Slingshot (CallPlus' residential brand) is thanks to significant investment in its network that included deployment of Juniper MX80 3D Universal Edge router at 28 points-of-presence around the country.

Below are TrueNet's test results for September 2012, plus Mr Butt's commentary.

TrueNet users "probes" (modified DSL/wireless modems) in hundreds of volunteers' homes around the coutnry to compile its results.

TRUENET

September 2012 Report

Investment in network pays off for Slingshot
Investment in their network has paid off for Slingshot, making them the lead ISP due to "significant investment in bandwidth and caching" according to their Chief Technology Officer, Adrian Dick.  Slingshot's improvement was across the board for both Surfing and Speed consistency.  Coincidentally, TrueNet separated Slingshot's Capped vs Unlimited plans and found that Slingshot is performing as well as the best ISPs for the most common capped plan while their Unlimited plans are better than some ISPs capped plans. 

Throughput
In previous reports TrueNet has included all Slingshot probes together, as we do for all ISPs, however Slingshot, and Orcon now sell Unlimited plans. TrueNet sees this  development as a new market segment.  Both websites are explicit about peak performance reducing on unlimited plans with Orcon saying "on occasion you might see your speeds slowing"  and Slingshot saying they operate "traffic prioritisation policies". 

Slingshot's capped performance for September is equal to 5 other ISPs, Snap, Actrix, Xnet, Orcon and Telecom.  Slingshot's Unlimited plans may not be expected to perform as well as capped plans, but they are significantly better than both TelstraClear and Vodafone's capped services.

Speed by Time of Day Performance

Click chart to enlarge

Maxnet's performance is declining by an increasing margin over past months, down from almost 75% last month to under 70% this month.

Surfing Performance
Slingshot's August network investment has made an extraordinary difference in September, their capped service now beats Vodafone into first place for capped DSL services.  Vodafone, Telecom, and TelstraClear DSL all retain very close performances. 

Even Slingshot's Unlimited service comes in ahead of 4 other ISPs capped services, Xnet, Snap, Orcon and Actrix.

Click chart to enlarge

For future reports TrueNet will separate Orcon's capped and unlimited plans when we have sufficient volunteer numbers to accurately report both results.

We are looking for more volunteers on unlimited plans.