NBN peak hour congestion is way down, according to ACCC’s first official speed tests

The first results from the ACCC’s NBN broadband speed testing program have been released, revealing average peak-hour speeds for customers signed up with one of the major providers, and the results are… promising.

It was found that Telstra, Optus, iiNet, and TPG are delivering download speeds that are only 10-20% slower in the busiest hours (between 7-11pm) than the maximum plan speeds. The upload speeds during the same period fared even better, ranging from almost 87% of maximum speeds to just over 98%.

While Telstra, TPG, and iiNet all performed similarly with their download speeds, achieving 88-91% of maximum plan speeds in this period, Optus lagged behind at 80.7%.

It’s not just a matter of who you’re with…

As for the different pricing tiers, the report found that all three options performed considerably better than ADSL during the peak hours, with NBN100 achieving 87.97Mbps on average (88.0%), NBN50 on 44.34Mbps (88.7%), NBN25 on 21.52Mbps (86.1%), while ADSL connections averaged 7.99Mbps. That's only 66.6% of the promised 12Mbps that an ADSL setup should offer.

While the averages do paint a fairly rosy picture, the ACCC also noted that 5% of all customers were achieving less than half of the maximum speeds that their plan promised them.

ACCC Chairman Rod Sims says that these results "indicate to us that retailers are now providing enough network capacity to meet demand in peak usage periods, including on the top speed plans, [although] the results for some types of services are still lower than we would like."

The report mentions that Fibre to the Node (FTTN) connections "were a factor that brought down the average speeds overall" but they’re hoping that "averages will improve further as service providers act on court-enforceable undertakings".