ACCC calls for action on NBN after speeds show “no significant improvement” since 2020

Australians are being ‘‘dudded’’ by stagnating NBN upload speeds far below the top rates advertised in their internet plans, new data reveals.

The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission said its latest National Broadband Network (NBN) report shows there has been ‘‘no significant improvement’’ in fixed-line upload speeds since early 2020.

It means the data rates determining how fast photos, videos and other files are uploading to the internet are still far behind what users pay for.

Average upload speeds on NBN fixed-line connections were just 85.6% of the maximum speeds advertised by retailers over May 2022.

It was just a small improvement on the 84.7% found in February.

It comes despite a recent bounce in download speeds, with more users now enjoying data rates more closely aligned to their official NBN plans.

To address the issue, the ACCC wants the NBN Co. to implement new rules allowing more upload data to pass through the network.

Calls to improve NBN upload speeds

ACCC commissioner Anna Brakey said upload speeds are important to users, particularly those working from home or using cloud storage.

But despite this, Australians are still paying for maximum rates that are not being achieved by many retailers, even outside the peak periods.

The ACCC wants the NBN Co. to address this with what’s called ‘‘over provisioning’’ in the upload component of the internet they sell retailers.

Over provisioning is when the NBN Co. provides higher data rates to retailers than what’s in their plans, allowing for ‘‘protocol overhead’’, which ensures data sent over the internet knows where to go and when.

A Flourish chart

‘‘Over provisioning intends to compensate for the bandwidth taken up by protocol overhead as it enables consumers to experience speeds closer to the maximum of their plan,’’ the ACCC said in its report on Tuesday.

NBN Co. started over provisioning download data during COVID-19, when demand for internet exploded during state-wide lockdown rules.

The ACCC says this had a marked impact on the market, with certain NBN fixed-line speed tiers being over provisioned by about 15%.

‘‘Download speeds have improved for many consumers over the past two years because NBN Co. over provisions the download component of their plans,’’ Ms Brakey said on Tuesday.

‘‘Upload speeds are more substantially below maximum plan speeds because NBN Co. doesn’t over provision the upload link.’’

It now wants NBN Co. to implement these rules for data upload speeds.

Download speeds in May were 99.3% of internet plan maximums, on average for all hours, compared to 97.9% during February.

This rate fell to 97.6% at peak times (between 7pm and 11pm).

Australian Communications Consumer Action Network (ACCAN) chief Andrew Williams supported the ACCC’s call, saying he was ‘‘concerned’’ that Australians have suffered stagnating upload speeds since 2020.

‘‘From the beginning of the pandemic, consumers have continued to work and study from home, which means they need fast and reliable upload speeds,’’ Mr Williams said.

‘‘Retailers need to ensure that they’re allocating enough network capacity to ensure that consumers can continue to use the internet for everyday tasks such as video calls or using cloud applications.’’

‘‘It’s clear from these findings that upload speeds need to be improved for consumers as a matter of priority.’’

Questions over ACCC report

RMIT University Associate Professor Mark Gregory said Australians ‘‘continue to be dudded by slow and unreliable upload speeds’’.

But he raised questions with the ACCC report, saying the watchdog has not included every plan and has underestimated the speeds of others.

‘‘The number of test units is unacceptably low, given the length of time that this [ACCC] monitoring program has been in place and program cost to taxpayers,’’ he said.

‘‘The 12/1 and 25/5 Mbps [megabytes per second] plans and popular plans like Aussie Broadband’s 100/40 Mbps plan appear to be missing from the upload table on page 8 of the appendix.’’

Dr Gregory also said the ACCC ‘‘incorrectly’’ used the term ‘quality of experience’ in its report to refer to whether a consumer can receive a video steam without drop outs, when this metric should actually reflect customer satisfaction with the quality of their video streams.

‘‘The fundamental problems with the report highlight why there is a need for the ACCC to go back to the drawing board,’’ he said.

This article was first published by The New Daily.