If on a 50 Mbps plan you normally wouldn’t see 50 you might see 49 Mbps but there is some overhead you will always lose no matter what way you connect (FTTP, FTTN, HFC, FTTC etc). So no on average on a 50/20 plan you would see something less than 50 Mbps, my 100/40 plan on Fibre averages about 90 Mbps with a top of 98 Mbps (that’s normal for Fibre).
You can have 1 Gbps here just no one wants to pay the price…Singapore providers offer 10 Gbps (10,000 Mbps), NZ is starting to role out 10 Gbps with a minimum 1 Gbps promise. NBN Co and the LNP Govt gave us voters what we voted for, nothing less. This has been discussed many times on this site, sadly until we get a Govt willing to move into the 20th Century we are stuck in the 19th one…noting that most of the World lives in the 21st Century. Blaming RSPs for the slow best Internet speeds is favoured by the Govt as it directs the blame way away from them who are in fact the ones responsible. TPG, Telstra, Optus and others have what is often termed “Dark Fibre” (their own private fibre networks) where they can offer multi Gbps speeds to those willing to pay but even at the Govt mandated Speed limits can do a far better job in regards to speed and reliability.
FWIW, a friend in the land of the free and home of the brave told me that one provider is offering 1000 Mbps plans. Now that is what I call “customer service”.
Another aspect of HFC not prominently mentioned is that all subscribers on a single cable trunk share the available bandwidth. If one is on a trunk with 100 other houses and everyone decides to stream a video at the same time it will degrade and could appear erratic as the streaming clients buffer (to keep the example simple).
If someone has mentioned this previously, my apologies.
The RSPs buy capacity off NBN and then have to juggle their delivery to their customers.
If in a particular area, over that area’s delivery method, there are more customers wanting download speeds that exceed the purchased bulk capacity, then obviously there is a problem for the RSP.
What do they do? Buy more capacity from NBN? Or maybe just slow things down and hope most customers don’t notice? Or upsell those who do notice to a higher more expensive plan and put the extra revenue into more capacity? Or do they just tweak the multiplexing so more TDM slots are available for the premium customers?
It could be up to 740. The NBN Co offered up that the average was 234. No one thought to ask the percentage of lines with more than 300, 400, etc.
Keeping it simple one view is the average allocated capacity of a single NBN HFC Coax cable shared across 300 users is 12Mbps. It’s likely significantly less, if you read the link. Caution for some as it’s slightly techie and specialised.
The issues with NBN Fixed Wireless congestion are often publicised. Design less than demand. Similar outcomes given a little time for demand to build may not be that far off for HFC. Perhaps they have arrived?
Speaking of HFC, I chatted to my neighbour today. We live in the same bldg. We share the same cable. I have TPG NBN 3 (sorry, it’s called “NBN 50” but I get 3 Mbps most often). He is with Telstra NBN 50 and often tests his speed: he gets very close to 50 Mbps every time.
First I need to confirm what he says is true all the time. Second, what is to say that my experience with Telstra, which is his ISP, will be better than my experience with TPG.
Also I want a refund for months of being served a fraction of what I am paying for. I think this is what philT told me the ACCC in 2019 demanded of telcos.
It’s possible that you do, and also possible that you may not. For an MDU (units, flats, town houses etc) the HFC lead in cable may be a single coax. In our Townhouse the NBN installed a single lead in cable and an 8 way splitter in a cabinet. There is a seperate cable from the splitter to each property. The desired design outcome is to provide similar lengths of cable run to each individual customer.
Is there the possibility of a fault on the cable from the splitter to your unit? It would not affect your neighbour. It’s important to consider your RSP - TPG has no control over this equipment. Including the NTD (Coax Cable Modem) as this all belongs to the NBN Co.
When I’ve had speed issues with the internet, I’ve run the speed tests at different times during the day. Early in the morning 5am or earlier is one of the best times to always check each day. All the heavy users are in bed asleep. And the rest are still avoiding getting up, or have gone for a walk with the dog etc. It will give you the clearest indication of the maximum speed at which you are able to connect.
Or poor connection within the splitter or a problem with the splitter unit.
It does sound like it could be a hardware issue…or something like chanhel congestion. …or signal interference with wifi such as running microwave if using 2.4GHz connection, router problem etc.
It may be requesting for TPG to send out a technician to see if they can identify what the priblem is otherwise you go through the grief of changing RSP and find the problem still exists.
TPG will be happy to oblige if the customer agrees to pay a fee if there is no fault found with NBN equipment. The tech will be arranged by TPG through the NBN Co, and will not be a TPG employee.
Thus it is to one’s benefit to accumulate all the evidence possible to point the NBN tech at the problem, and that it seems unique to the single premises. A history of variable speedtests as well as the same from the neighbours Telstra service would probably be helpful.
My understanding is NBN uses their (NBN supplied) modem’s MAC address to connect/route the customer to the RSP’s systems.
Since the routing between a customer and his RSP is done by NBN Co, it seems one could take their kit (cable modem and router and computer/device) to the next flat, connect it up and it should connect to TPG and speedtests can again be run to compare quality of service. Can anyone confirm or correct that?
A free speedtest account can be a good bit of evidence, all in one place.
I spent some time with the team doing our townhouse HFC install in Brisbane and then the Team that came to install the NBN modem etc.
In our instance the splitter is dumb (unpowered). Assuming @Jon01 has a similar install, there is no way the system knows any difference. The NBN modem did not require any configuration. It would work in our instance.
If it is a hardware fault not the RSP delivery then you may have a hard time getting a refund. The service that you are getting is most probably a hardware issue…this could be the NTD (nbn™ HFC modem) it could be your router (in which case you will be responsible to pay for the call out), it could be the cabling to your unit/house, it could also be someone else’s noisy modem on the line.
It is unlikely that it is TPG throttling your service (I’m not saying it isn’t this case), they know the repercussions of not providing the service that has been paid for and they would want to avoid the cost to them. Part of testing your speed would have probably involved you turning off and on devices eg the modem and the router before TPG conduct a line test, this would if done reset the device/s to “pre-noise” levels but if there was a fault on the line somewhere then the speed would degrade fairly quickly after the initial higher speeds, and after that would remain low until another device restart. This is an easy test for you to conduct in that you can turn off the devices, restart them and do a speedtest, if the result is a higher speed again then you can be fairly sure the fault is hardware and not TPG. If you don’t get a higher initial speed it still doesn’t mean it is TPG though.
What your neighbour gets on their Telstra connection is only to show that their connection is a good one, it isn’t a given that because their’s is that your one one is as well, indeed they could have a noisy modem that is making it poor for everyone else on the shared cabling…nothing is certain until testing locates the issue.
Thanks for yr feedback. I will consider it in detail. I am however amazed that I told TPG not to call me to explain the appalling service as I am considering changing ISPs. In the last day they called me more than in the last 2 years: 13 times. I refused to pick up the phone when I specifically asked for any offer they make or suggestion the provide to be in writing. Of course if I did pick up the phone I doubt I would be able to understand TPG’s offshore workers. Last time I spoke and barely comprehended what was said, hence my insistence on em ails.
