Flip delivered an extraordinary result for their ADSL product, with their peak NZ download speed being equal to their off-peak speed, meaning no congestion at all.
(TrueNet is contracted to the Commerce Commission to monitor broadband performance. It uses a network of probes attached to 400 volunteers' internet connections to rate ISPs — Editor.)
Flip delivered an extraordinary result for their ADSL product, with their peak NZ download speed being equal to their off-peak speed, meaning no congestion at all. They also managed an excellent website download result.
January 2016 saw little change from December 2015, but some ISPs are reaching their capacity limits again with a little bit of congestion showing.
We include Voyager VDSL again after a long period without sufficient panelists. They performed very well in downloads, less so when retrieving a webpage from Australia.
Summary of Performance Measures
Flip ADSL and Spark VDSL delivered an outstanding performance this month with not only excellent webpage downloads, but also 100% and 99% minimum speeds during evening peak usage periods.
The growth of the average speed of VDSL due to Chorus bandplan updates, shows as a new average of 30Mb/s, after being only 24Mb/s back in November 2015. Despite the better ADSL lines being upgraded to VDSL, ADSL still retains an average speed of 10Mb/s, suggesting many more subscribers could change to VDSL for a better service if they are not able to change to fibre yet.
Table 1: Summary of Performance Measures
(Click to zoom)
Webpage Download Time
Methodology
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Responsive website browsing is valued by most Internet users, and conversely, slow-loading sites can be extremely frustrating. TrueNet tests Internet browsing by downloading a selection of Live Webpages from NZ, Australia, and the USA, measuring the time to fully download all files on the page. These pages are changed from time-to-time. This month there are 7 NZ pages, 4 Australian, and 4 USA pages. The charts in this section have three points for each ISP entry showing the Min Hour (minimum time to download a webpage); the Max Hour (maximum time to download a webpage); and the Median of all hours. The best ISP has a low median, and a short arrow showing the spread between peak and off-peak performance. We download 7 popular NZ websites from each connection, and compare the average time taken to download all websites. This test replicates daily activity for many people, and we group the websites into regions, NZ, Australia and USA, so that readers can compare ISPs based on their own preferences. |
NZ Live Webpages
The spread between peak and off-peak webpage performance is noticable for iiNet, Other ISPs and Slingshot ADSL suggesting congestion is coming back with some ISPs.
Compared to several months ago, Other ISPs are now among the worst results in each category, while there was a period (e.g. November) where this grouping was amongst the best of ADSL / VDSL results.
Chart 1: Live NZ Webpage Download Time - in seconds
Australian Live Webpages
| We download 4 popular Australian websites from each connection, and compare the average time taken to download all websites. This test replicates daily activity for many people, but to provide the ability for readers to compare between ISPs based on their own preferences, we group the websites into regions, NZ, Australia and USA. |
This month all websites took slightly longer to download due to changes in some websites. A greater spread of peak to off-peak times are showing up in Other ISPs, iiNet/TPG; and 2Degrees to a lesser extent. The only other real change is a major improvement for Other ISPs fibre testing with Australia Website tests, they now look very similar to all other listed ISPs.
Voyager VDSL, returns to the chart after a long absence due to a shortage of panelists. They took nearly twice as long as the best (Orcon) to download webpages, but with little variation.
Chart 2: Live Australian Webpage Download Time - in seconds
US Live Webpages
| We download 4 popular US websites from each connection, and compare the average time taken to download all websites. This test replicates daily activity for many people, but to provide the ability for readers to compare between ISPs based on their own preferences, we group the websites into regions, NZ, Australia and USA. |
Downloading webpages from the USA is little changed from December 2016. However, a real improvement for Other ISPs 100Mb/s fibre is evident, and Vodafone had a noticable improvement in ADSL.
Unfortunately Voyager panelists did not all give us enough capacity to test to the USA.
Chart 3: Live USA Webpage Download Time - in seconds
Speed (File Download Performance)
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For TrueNet's speed tests each panelist's probe regularly downloads a 1MB or 2MB file from Auckland, Wellington, Dallas and Sydney. The faster the connection, the larger the file we need to download to ensure that the maximum speed is reached during our test. 100Mb/s connections easily reach full speed before 2MB of data is downloaded. Slower connections can test accurately with much smaller files. Our tests on Satellite, Wireless and ADSL can tolerate a file size of just 300k. New Zealand tests take the best of each test run from Auckland or Wellington. International tests take the result from each test run from Dallas, or Sydney. Our reported measure is the average hourly speed as a percentage of the best hourly speed in the month, this measures the ISP performance rather than the technology performance. |
Minor congestion is showing again after a month in December where we found little congestion anywhere.
International File Download Speed
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TrueNet tests File Download Speeds from our servers in Dallas & Sydney to measure performance to our international neighbours. We ensure the download file is not held in New Zealand (cached), so that the test truly measures international performance. The results are selected from the 8pm to 10pm evening busy period, when any congestion is most likely to be observed. |
Fibre & Cable
2Degrees USA speed reduced this month by about 30%, it's possible that this could impact video performance. We download our random file from a major hub in Dallas.
Chart 4: Fibre, Cable File Download Speed - Dallas & Sydney
ADSL & VDSL (Copper Connections)
| Copper connections (ADSL & VDSL) have a speed that is dependent on the distance between the home modem, and the exchange equipment which means that ISPs do not have any influence on the peak speed of each connection. To overcome this limitation, the Australia, and USA speeds are referenced to the average NZ download speed of the respective ISPs. The speed reported is from the 8pm-10pm evening period. |
BigPipe and Spark ADSL connections are significantly slower than December 2015, suggesting congestion is beginning to show again. Spark dropped from a creditable 80% of peak NZ speeds (advertised speed) from Australia down to 70%, BigPipe had a similar decline. All other changes were minor.
Chart 5: ADSL, VDSL File Download Speed - Dallas & Sydney
NZ File Download Speed
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Comparing performance by time-of-day is important as it shows the service degradation when everyone is using the Internet during the evening hours of 8pm to 10pm. TrueNet uses the best of a pair of Auckland and Wellington download tests to calculate the median NZ results by hour over the month for each monitored connection. We take the average of all median results with each ISP for each hour. A poor result typically shows the line drop below 90%, which usually occurs in the busy period between 7pm and 10pm, ie if this is true, the average user for that ISP is getting less than 90% of their line capability. |
Technology Comparison
Minor variations by Time of Day are visible for VDSL, 30Mb/s fibre and 50Mb/s cable, but as discussed above these are limited in nature. Slightly more congeestion is showing on average in other products, but not noticable to most users.
Chart 6: Fibre, Cable, and Copper (DSL) Download Speed
Fibre - Cable ISP Comparison
2Degrees fibre, and Vodafone cable show well above advertised speed at all times, despite a little congestion. As can be seen Other ISPs, and MyRepublic fibre continue to deliver much less than advertised speed when downloading files from our internet exchange based servers, however Other ISPshave improved significantly, suggesting more ISPs have discovered how to deliver advertised speeds. (note all ISPs have experienced issues achieving advertised speeds in the past until they "interconnected correctly with Chorus" - quote from an ISP technical expert).
Vodafone Fibre continues to be very slow compared to other ISPs, despite a large sample of panelists. MyRepublic has a significant peak traffic speed reduction, suggesting major congestion through the internet exchanges - this is consistent on all MyRepublic panelist connections.
Chart 7: Fibre & Cable Performance as Percentage of Advertised Speed
DSL Performance by Time of Day (ToD)
High Speed Copper (VDSL) File Download Speed
Voyager was included this month after a long period with insufficient panelists, achieving similar, excellent results to 2Degrees. Spark had extremely consistent ToD results for VDSL in January suggesting almost zero congestion. Vodafone and Bigpipe had more ToD variation comparatively again this month.
Chart 8: VDSL File Download Speed by Time of Day
Low Speed Copper (ADSL) File Download Speed
Flip got 100% for January 2016, ie their peak speed was as good as their off-peak speed, meaning no congestion at all. Flip now joins BigPipe in being the only ISPs to achieve 100% of maximum speed, over a single month, in the history of TrueNet's testing regime.
ADSL speeds by time of day were again consistently above 90% for almost all ISPs. Bigpipe however, appears to be having problems - dropping from best (99%) in December 2015, to just 92% a month later.
Chart 9: ADSL File Download Speed by Time of Day
Upload Speed - Performance
| Upload speed is important to users sending large amounts of data through the Internet, or loading files to the Cloud. TrueNet's upload test sends a 1MB file to our Wellington server, and records the results using a similar method to the download tests, but measured from Wellington only. |
Panelists generally get what they buy for upload speeds at present, although some lucky VDSL customers are not being restricted to the 10Mb/s apparently originally set by Chorus.
By Technology
The upload speed results have hardly changed, despite major improvements to VDSL upload speeds in December for a small number of users - as outlined last month. The lack of significant improvement is due to the majority of connections (90%) having only a small change in upload speed. The new bandplan has reduced upload speeds for many connections, possibly most, we will investigate when speeds have settled.
Chart 10: Upload Performance by Technology
Upload Time of Day Performance - by ISP
Upload speeds are becoming more important as cloud services and video communications increase. Chart 11 shows that there is almost no congestion in upload. However, the actual speed of upload is sometimes better than advertised for some ISPs, especially 2Degrees 50Mb/s, Orcon 20Mb/s and Spark10Mb/s.
Chart 11: Fibre & Cable ToD Upload Speed by ISP
