August 2012 Broadband Report: ISPs in Two Distinct Groups

August 2012 Broadband Report
[Full report with charts: August 2012 Broadband Report | TrueNet - The broadband monitors]

2012-09-17

ISPs in Two Distinct Groups

The TrueNet Time-of-Day Speed measure reports that, during peak load periods, five ISPs met the TrueNet standard of 95% of their fastest speed. This is an improvement on 8 months ago when only Snap and Telecom met the TrueNet standard.

For the first time TrueNet is publishing a Surfing the Internet by Time-of-Day analysis, which has Snap & Telecom alone achieving better than 90% of maximum performance.

File download speeds

Peak time DSL speeds show ISPs are in two distinct groups for tests measuring downloads from TrueNet's national testfile. The group of 5 ISPs, better than 95%, is led this month by Snap, followed by Telecom, Xnet, Actrix and Orcon. During peak hours the remaining ISPs are grouped together at a much lower 80% to 90% of peak speeds.

By way of comparison, we have included results for probes operating from Sydney. These compete with TelstraClear and Maxnet for last place during the peak evening traffic period.

Surfing Performance by Time-of-Day

This month TrueNet compared average peak time performance by Time-of-Day of each ISP when surfing 9 popular webpages. This provides a comparison with the file downloads chart shown above. TrueNet set the probes to download the front pages of most Banks for a two week period, comparing these with TrueNet's NZ & USA Testpages as well as the Trademe homepage.

Snap and Telecom achieved the best surfing times for these webpages by a wide margin. They were the only ISPs during periods of peak load to achieve better than 90% of their best time. Third placed Orcon achieved 86% of the peak, and TelstraClear (DSL & Cable) just 73%.

Multiple page surfing tests were limited to panel members with larger caps, reducing the number of ISPs available for reporting.

Standard Surfing Results

TrueNet's standard surfing the Internet test, downloads a specified web page every hour from every panel member's home or business. Little change is evident this month after a big change in last month's measure. The sudden, unexplained drop in Telecom's performance has reversed, placing them back in the very quick group of ISPs including Telecom, Vodafone and TelstraClear DSL.

ENDS

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