The latest ACCC broadband speed report shows 7 per cent of NBN customers are receiving less than half of their maximum speed of the plan.

The report, Measuring Broadband Australia (MBA) is providing new data on the performance of NBN fixed-line services, expanding the report to cover six major ISPs – Aussie Broadband, iiNet, MyRepublic, Optus, Telstra and TPG.

Overall, 70 per cent of all tests continued to achieve download speeds of above 90 per cent of maximum plan speeds.

The ACCC says these numbers are largely in line with the results of its first MBA report.

Rod Sims ACCC Chair says, “Whilst we are pleased to see that most customers are able to get fast, reliable broadband services even during busy hours, we must focus our attention on those who do not have this experience.”

This report looks at the impact that ‘under performing services’ are having on overall download speeds.

These services do not achieve speeds that approach the maximum plan speeds at any time of the day. Across the six ISPs, there is potential for speed results to improve by between 1.5 and 9.4 percentage points if these under performing services instead reached close to the maximum plan speed.

The average speeds of between 74 and 88 per cent of maximum plan speeds. One ISP who was lagging the field, Optus, recorded an improvement on the previous report’s result.

In general, speeds did not reduce significantly in the busy hours (7-11pm) with speeds for most ISPs about 1 percentage point below speeds recorded across all hours, and the download speeds for MyRepublic reducing by 5 percentage points.

Sims says, “Overall, the results are encouraging, particularly when considering the significant recent migration of NBN customers to higher speed plans, where hard limits on individual connections to the network are more likely to impede services reaching their maximum speeds.”

However, the data highlights that there are areas for improvement and so should prompt further performance-based competition among the ISPs to close this gap for consumers.

Sims says, “We urge providers to help customers obtain the full speeds associated with the plans they are acquiring. We also expect ISPs to inform customers of the speeds achievable on their network connections, and better match the plans they offer to those speeds. The recent court enforceable undertakings accepted by the ACCC will help with this.

A number of telcos and broadband providers such as Myrepublic, iiNet, Dodo and iPrimus have been called out by the ACCC for false or misleading representations over their NBN broadband speeds.

The NBN is forecast to be completed in 2020.