For avid internet users, news that the Australian Competition and Consumer Commision is looking at internet speed is welcomed.
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Much has been written about the National Broadband Network in recent years – a great deal of it misinformed for various reasons.
It’s fair to say that Australia’s multi-billion-dollar internet project has been used as a political football for far too long – by parties determined to sway the debate one way or the other, relying on the general public’s lack of understanding to suit their own agenda.
As reported by The Examiner yesterday, the ACCC has raised concerns about unclear information regarding broadband performance advertising.
Leaving the NBN aside for now, most internet service providers list internet speeds in megabytes a second. For example, they will advertise a broadband connection as 24MB/s. Unfortunately for the consumer, that’s more often than not an absolute peak speed, one that will almost never be achieved even in the most ideal circumstances. The reality is, if you live several kilometres from your local exchange and have moderately old copper telephone wiring in your street, you’re more likely to get somewhere between 4-6MB/s.
The NBN goes a fair way to addressing this issue. Fibre optic cable is super fast and doesn’t suffer from the same issues as copper. That’s in the case of fibre-to-the-home connections. The slower fibre-to-the-node, which is the preferred rollout option of the federal Liberal government, will suffer from the speed reduction because it relies on copper wiring to connect the internet to your home.
There is, however, another elephant in the room when it comes to this country’s internet industry – monthly download limits, or bandwidth caps.
It’s something that’s not exclusive to Australia, but more-and-more, consumers are demanding ISPs increase their caps or remove them altogether.
Following the boom of internet television services such as Netflix and Stan, the demand on ISP infrastructure is increasing. There are a handful of ISPs who do offer unlimited plans, but more often than not it’s the exception rather than the rule.
There’s a small chance that comeptition may force ISPs to remove those caps, but that’s unlikely. What is likely is that limits will become the next issue for ISPs – and perhaps the ACCC – to deal with.
