Latest correspondence from Honesty Box includes this:
Device upgrade
You were one of the first participants to receive a device from us last year.
Since then, we’ve released a new improved version of the Honesty Box. We would
like to swap your old version for a new one, at no charge to you.
Presumably other early joiners will also receive a new device.
I enquired about how much bandwidth it will use, as we often struggle to stay within our 45GB monthly limit, and Marketing and Data Coordinator Ashima Tyagi replied:
Regarding your concern over the Data Limit. The device will use less than a GB over a month period, >during which only less than 500 MB might fall under peak usage. Considering your total limit in a month, we >assure that the consumption would not cause you any trouble as it is negligible if considered.
Also, at long last, this news:
What’s New?
We are excited to enroll you in our Beta Test Group community to provide you with better insights of your >broadband performance , you would receive your individual test results very soon.
Page load times of a few seconds? Some pages never finish loading for me! Particularly ones using Google Earth imagery- left with blank or fuzzy image squares covering up to half the page sometimes.
When I say never… I give up waiting after a minute or 2, and view a terrain or standard map instead.
As an aside, I was sitting in the car NW of Sydney last month, about 1km from an Optus Tower and ran Speedtest on my phone… 4G delivered up to 189Mbps! Best of 3, the other 2 were 185 and 177, with uploads 16, 29 and 35Mbps.
Geez it chews through the data though!
I’m on the same page as @gordon. Not so useful a report as there is no published FW and no satellite results to assess the NBN Co against.
While there is no clear report on the number of under performing services - the chart of ‘Average NBN download speeds achieved during tests’ infers up to 15% of tests failed to acheive 70% of the tier speed?
Perhaps there are 10% or a greater number of customers who are getting substandard NBN outcomes. The report appears to neatly avoid any such comparison. I’m left wondering whose team the ACCC is batting for here?
The report avoids making performance comparisons between the different NBN tiers and technologies. It assumes we all have equal access which is far from correct!
For some reason the report chooses to compare the NBN results to ADSL services. Which is meaningless (marketing hype aside) given how widely the ADSL service quality varies.
Given one option for the sale of the NBN is to exclude the FW and satellite services, has the ACCC astutely preempted that outcome? Another hint FW and SkyMuster soon may no longer be part of the NBN?
Alternately the data would reveal what we all know. Neither satellite nor FW are fit for purpose in their current form.
I usually consider most things the ACCC publishes (sans an RC in progress) as being government propaganda to the full extent they can make it so. Blind Freddy has provided such valuable information such as ‘shop around’ if one is unhappy with a supplier, provider, or prices. Who would have ever thought to do that?!
Since one cannot shop for a functional broadband system since all the RSPs are essentially NBN resellers with some servers and NBN CVC contracts the ACCC’s job seems to be to sell it as best they can, and less data usually delivers fewer exceptions from the layman reader.
The NBN and the ACCC report on the NBN both seem like a load of
My Honesty Box report has our internet connection showing better than 57.6% of others on FTTP 100/40 but has been steadily reducing in that %age, our connection over the last 3 months has been consistent in results so perhaps others are becoming better so we are more homogeneous or perhaps others are improving above our results. Our average download speed is 87 Mbps, avg upload speed 27.8 Mbps and around 16 ms latency. So a way to go with respect to upload speeds.
There are also wild swings between maximum and minimum speeds during the day:
In an ideal network the bell curve should be very narrow, eg almost everyone should be near the 50% mark and those more than +/- 5% would be outliers. Or more simply, everyone would be getting the same (good) performance. Superimposing your data onto the FTTP bell curve would be enlightening as to how the network is really going.
Since meeting with the NBN 50/20 from ADSL (11/0.8) I have noticed less consistency through the day as well as what I perceive to be more dropped packets as I need to refresh the browser more often for proper or sometimes any screen to display.
Page 13 is particularly interesting. It compares percentage of ‘maximum’ download/upload speed for particular technologies. FTTP and HFC are both over 90% in both directions, while FTTN is just on 80% for downloads and even less for uploads! What a surprise.
The report also refers to ‘underperforming’ services. These affect 13% of total participants, but 25% of FTTN users.
Do I understand that Aussie has the most trouble meeting demands during the busiest hours? I seem to remember that was one of their main selling points, that they were limiting the number of sign-ups so they wouldn’t be overloaded. (not that this will bother us after living with ADSL I imagine)
I think I have one of them, the latest Honesty Box report said that my internet is better than 18% of others on 25/5 plans! Of course that means it is worse than 82%
If you are interested in ABB you can see which of their nodes will service your property via their web site. It has a nice graph showing its loading. I am not thrilled with ABB myself, for a number of reasons, but bandwidth is not one of them. I am getting 48/17.6 off-peak and 46/17.2 peak on HFC. More than sufficient for us, and what is a few Mbps +/- when you have excess for your needs anyway? Prior to signing up my servicing node was identified as their North Balwyn, and it had lots of headroom. Not quite as much headroom now. Here is a link..
Thanks for that. We signed up a while ago, but the NBN isn’t ‘quite’ here yet. Coming shortly, we’re told. One of the reasons we chose it was that they said they were limiting customers, presumably so the system could cope. We’ll see.
