ACCC Report finds National Broadband Network delivering fastest speeds yet

Speeds on the NBN just keep increasing – and that’s not spin. It’s the evidence from a formal speed monitoring program overseen by the regulator the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC). 

According to the ACCC’s latest Measuring Broadband Australia report, average download speeds over the fixed line network are the highest seen to date.

Average download speeds achieved 96.7 per cent of plan speeds during the day and 95.7 per cent during the busy evening hours (7-11pm). This beats the previous record from October last year of 94 per cent.

Since 2018, the ACCC’s Measuring Broadband Australia program has provided real world independent data on retail broadband performance. The latest report, released on 30 June 2021, provides performance results for February 2021.

As ACCC Commissioner Ms Anna Brakey said, “These latest results suggest the NBN is performing well and retail service providers are largely delivering what consumers expect and have paid for.”

The report has some very useful information for Australian Consumers. For example, the most popular speed tier, ‘NBN50,’ is capable of reliably handling three Ultra High Definition video streams at a time, which should be more than enough to keep the whole family happy on a rainy day over the school holidays.

For the first time the report covers the performance of NBN’s ‘Home Ultrafast’ product.

Consumers on these plans experienced average speeds between 608-745 Mbps:  a third of tests conducted found a download speed of at least 900 Mbps.

The NBN provides critical services to Australian’s. This Measuring Broadband Australia Report tells us a lot more about those services: people are getting what they pay for and speeds are continuing to rise.