Credit: Credit: Dreamstime
Dodo and iPrimus have been singled out as failing to deliver their advertised peak-time download speeds in the latest broadband performance report.
The Vocus Group-owned broadband retail service providers were found to have delivered average National Broadband Network (NBN) download speeds of 76.4 per cent of maximum plan speeds during the high-demand evening hours in August 2019.
As such, Dodo and iPrimus fell short of their advertised speed plans, according to the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC), which carried out the test.
The competition watchdog’s report, Measuring Broadband Australia, attributed this to the RSPs basing their advertised speeds on averaged evening data rather than those delivered when its network is very busy.
“We will be following this up with Dodo/iPrimus as this approach means it will fall short whenever its speeds dip, as they did this quarter,” ACCC chair Rod Sims said.
“If consumers are not getting what was promised by their providers, they should contact them to ask about getting the problem fixed or moving onto a cheaper plan where the speeds are attainable.”
However, Dodo and iPrimus were exceptions in the report, with the majority of other RSPs delivering their advertised speeds in all or almost all of the 120 busy hours that fell within the test period.
Optus delivered the highest percentage of maximum download speeds during the 7pm and 11pm window, ahead of TPG.
Average NBN download speeds ranged between 76 per cent and 87.6 per cent of maximum plan speeds.
The report showed Exetel, Optus and Telstra improved their speed test performance, while the other RSPs saw speeds decrease slightly, with NBN services outperforming ADSL.
On a connections front, hybrid fibre-coaxial (HFC) connections were the most likely to experience outages, averaging one every two to three days. These outages were also longer by three minutes on average than other connections.
Consumers on fibre-to-the-node (FttN) connections experienced slightly fewer outages, although most lasted for more than three minutes, the report found.
Meanwhile, fibre-to-the-premises (FttP) connections generally recorded few outages of more than 30 seconds, and most of these lasted for less than three minutes.
