For quite a few years, the ACCC has run the Measuring Broadband Australia program which Choice has utilised together with WhistleOut.
This program relied on volunteers having a box (Whitebox from Sam Knows) in their home to continuously monitor internet stability, speed and availability.
The Australian Government announced in March 2025 that it would end its funding commitment for the Measuring Broadband Australia program in June 2026 - now. Today I received an email to say the Measuring Broadband Australia program will conclude on June 30, 2026.
Does anyone, including CHOICE, know if there is anything that will replace that program, and if not, how will ISPs be monitored after 30 June 2026?
You may be able to continue to use https://realspeed.com/ if the Whitebox does not need to be returned. These routers are supported by Cisco, so other Cisco routers maybe be able to be used.
What other monitoring will be conducted? None that I am aware of. Though speedtest by Ookla continues to measure speeds and provides ratings on performance.
realspeed and Ookla donât appear to offer continuous 24x7 monitoring. Another benefit was you could see the incoming internet availability and speed as well as the speed at the unit the test was being run from.
The email from SamKnows stated:
What to expect after June 30, 2026:
Service Termination: Your Whitebox will be disabled, and your SamKnows One account will be closed.
Data Collection: All data collection from your Whitebox will cease immediately.
Data Privacy: Your measurement and registration data will be deleted in accordance with our retention obligations under our end-user licence agreement.
Hardware Disposal: You may unplug your Whitebox and we encourage you to dispose of it in an environmentally responsible manner. Free e-waste recycling services can be found at your Local Council & Resource Recovery Centre or your nearest Officeworks, JB Hi-Fi or Harvey Norman store.
There is still my initial question: Does anyone, including CHOICE, know if there is anything that will replace the Measuring Broadband Australia program, and if not, how will ISPs be monitored after 30 June 2026?
My understanding is there is no plans to replace the Measuring Australia Broadband program. The Commonwealth Government only extended funding of the program up until June 2026. There hasnât been any announcements to have a new program or to extend the funding again. As SamKnows has advised their boxes will be âbrickedâ and Australian accounts deleted, this suggests last minute extension of the existing program will not he occurring.
The other question which is relevant is will continuing the program provide useful information. It is unlikely any program will be value for monies spent when the ACCC has stated:
As there is overall very high consistency measured in the previous program, a new program is unlikely to have any material benefit expect collecting data. As @grahroll indicated, there are other ways speeds can be measured without the need to run separate government funded monitoring programs. I expect such data could readily be shared with governments should the need arise.
If you wish to confirm that there wonât be any future programs, it will be best to approach the ACCC as they ran the previous program.
For this user, the next step before the month end.
Log in to ones Sam Knows account, create custom reports for recent and past year. Select custom reports which will demonstrate service performance up to 30 June 2026. Save copies in a safe place for future reference.
Customers on NBN not full fibre services are most likely to need a reference as service capacity is most often shared across multiple customers.
Here where we rely on the Fixed Wireless NBN we have seen a gradual decline in speeds mostly at peak times.
Thoughts on the following step/s(options).
If one plans to recycle to scrap responsibly, hopefully leaving the white box connected up until the end date will see a forced reset or data wipe of any user specific data stored on the device.
If one is hoping to repurpose the device in some way, possibly wise to turn it off and remove from the network before the end date?
Noted there is more than one model of device provided by SamKnows. Advice on how to enable reuse varies according to model.
Aside:
Cisco who purchased SamKnows appear to be more oriented to delivering the product to corporates.
So in summary, it appears nothing will replace the Measuring Australia Broadband program and the Government/ACCC and CHOICE will be trusting the ISPs to tell us how well they are performing.
The government doesnât monitor everything. If it did, Australia would become a true surveillance society. The existing program has reached it natural end of life, as it served the purpose it was originally intended.
Once again the system is throwing the lesser of the NBN customers under the bus. Similar to how previous governments were saying Australianâs didnât need internet at the sort of speeds now available and accepted by a majority of NBN customers.
In a nation (Australia) with an ethos/culture which has long fought for a " fair go" disadvantage needs to be continually challenged, least we loose that common bond, OMHO.
As for how it can be on a Fixed Wireless 250/20.
The slowest download speeds correspond to the evening peak times each day.
Well it looks like not too many people care about placing their trust in the ISPs to report availability accurately.
As for the comment about the government not monitoring everything, I agree, BUT, without monitoring you donât know how well anything is performing. You only monitor what matters.
Over the last month on my connection SamKnows reported 90 disconnections totalling nearly 5 hours of outages. Without monitoring, I knew about 2 of them.
Outages are unlikely to be due to the ISP. Outages are most likely from the NBN infrastructure or the electricity network.
At our own location, a significant number of outages are due to micro power outages (fraction of a second to couple of seconds). This results in loss of connectivity. Such power outages occurs reasonably regularly where we live. I havenât explored, but, our router might be more sensitive to micro power outages. If others are less sensitive they might reduce the number we experience.
We have experienced long outages when cables have been damaged - there was a significant one in Tassie where both main and backup cables were damaged/severed at the same time. This also resulted in loss of the mobile network - which was a concern to us at the time as our busineesâs payment system uses the mobile network.
As ISPs donât cause outages, this is possibly a reason why the program isnât being continued. With many NBN customers being required to migrate (forced onto) ultra high speeds. This includes our own 50/20 plan being upgraded to 500/50 next month for an additional $5/month - noting some migrations have been free for some higher speed previous plans. Therefore, the rationale for monitoring speeds also diminishes as the higher speeds are far in excess of that required for almost all domestic applications.
77 disconnections for the last 30 days. The longest 4mins 59 seconds. Middle of the day. Our NBN NTD (modem), antenna, plus our router and attached network devices are powered from a UPS. Suggesting all issues relate to the NBN tower (signal loss) and or NBN coms faults.
The total time lost is not significant. However some software/data downloads or uploads are still susceptible to loss of comms. The streaming services we use appear robust enough to manage with buffering, although one has to put up with some stuttering of the content.
From previous experience with NBN service performance, prior to and post SamKnows. You are in the hands of your internet provider/RSP deciding to take your case on. Providing the evidence falls back to the customer. Having used to support a claim, the tools available including OOKLA SpeedTest, plus RSP provided tools (router/service included) - all fall short of what a âWhiteboxâ such as SamKnows can provide.
Unfortunately for consumers and to the benefit of the NBN, consumers have no means of direct recourse to hold the NBN to account. The ACCC program has been the sole exception.
That is incorrect. The NBN has a requirement to log and report outages/dropouts across their network. These logs are provided to the ACCC. This is independent of the ACCC Measuring Broadband Australia program. This ACCC program purpose was to measure broadband performance at the consumerâs end, and to ensure ISPs were not making misleading claims in relation to the broadband service which was available through their NBN plans.
NBN logs are used to determine whether there has performance incidents (PI) when using any fixed line service.
Whether one agrees or not, NBN Co defines a PI to have occurred when there are âfour to nine unexpected dropouts within one calendar day, occurring in the current day or any of the two previous calendar days.â This broadly corresponds to a maximum of 120+ dropouts per month.
Where PI are triggered, the NBN has obligations when PI targets are not met.
NBN is SIMPLY SHOCKING AND OVERPRICED I got a free upgrade to 750.40 from 250/20 late last year Speeds as low as 97.20 usually around 550/40 TPG owned IINET didnât believe me - I use https://testmy.net/ which allows auto testing at your desired interval for as many times as you like, and with an account it stores every test youâve done At the time I complained IINET/TPG removed their speedtest website, sent a TPG techician who spent 5 minutes at my home and told me everything was ok They use Speedtest and test a connection to your home city, which is generally not applicable to normal use since most website servers are based OS IMHO NBN is a way overpriced government owned corporation scam
You have identified the problem. Speed is between your premises and your NBN node. That is usually âlocalâ to your area. Your OS content sites are many networks with many operators and many nodes, some better than others, and the content servers themselves might not be up to serving the hundreds or tens of thousands of simultaneous hits. It is not always, and from your description of your experience it is most likely not, the NBN.
Is that adequate? Pointless holding the NBN to account for when itâs not being held accountable for service speeds. Especially when services are marketed/sold principally on the speeds a consumer can expect.
We could fill a whole topic reproducing the most common promotional material and business announcements in support. Includes the NBN Co and RSP (Service Providers) all eager to increase uptake and their share of the income. The NBN Co in particular made significant changes to the wholesale costs of CVC to encourage greater uptake of higher speed services. One consequence the cost of lower speed services increased more significantly than the higher speed services. The outcome to make lower speeds look less attractive - poorer value.
To offer if it was a motor vehicle all that matters is whether it breaks down often. And of no consequence it cannot reach 110kph or proceed up hill at a sped sufficient to match the traffic on the route. To say nothing of the ability to slow or stop on the way down the other side. Measuring just one metric which is not a frequent cause for complaint - very much a âlook over there and not hereâ solution deserving of âYes Ministerâ.
PS
Along side numerous emails recently from SamKnows advising the White Box in our home is no longer visible to them (not connected) - today a report for the NBN performance for the month of June 2026.
I think the concern would be that ISPs, or even NBNco itself, now knowing that widespread monitoring is no longer occurring, make a conscious or unconscious decision to cut corners / let standards slip / underprovision etc.
As an analogy, if the ATO announced today that from now on tax returns wonât be checked - tax returns will just be processed as submitted no questions asked - do you think that some honest taxpayers might become dishonest taxpayers? do you think that some careful taxpayers might become careless taxpayers? So even ATO Compliance programs that yield $0 in recovery and/or fines still serve a purpose.
So the quoted figure of â99.4%â may well degrade over time but there will be no data to show either way. It could be that customers will be complaining but there will be no hard data either way and so it will be possible to deny that there is a problem.
Itâs probably a fair decision by the government. Bottom line: The budget is ****ed and they need to cut costs, so some programs are always going to be on the chopping block. We are all collectively never going to agree about whose favourite programs survive and whose die.
Awkward conjunction of events: Hot on the heels of the government announcing that this program of widespread internet health monitoring is being terminated ⊠we have Telstraâs mobile network outage where Telstra didnât seem to have a clear picture of the scope and persistence of the outage.
The CFO was getting up at the presser telling Australia that â10,000 customers had intermittent serviceâ when it was possibly more like a million customers with basically a persistent failure for some hours.
Imagine if there were some automated reliable widespread means for Telstra to understand what the mobile network looks like from the customer side.
I know from experience that Telstra canât and doesnât rely on customer reports i.e. customers making contact with the call centre. Telstra just tells you anyway that noone else has reported the fault therefore the fault must be at your end. And at least some customers would be unable to report the fault via the call centre anyway.
I donât think I have a âwhiteboxâ so I donât know what its capabilities are and whether it could be repurposed to monitoring the mobile network.
However the standard(?) Telstra modem does come with backup mobile broadband. Therefore
a) the modem could be aware of the state of its potential connection to the Telstra mobile broadband network at all times, and
b) it even has the primary internet connection to report the state of the mobile broadband network when the mobile broadband network is actually down.
A sudden spike in automated fail reports from geographically dispersed services should be a warning sign that there is a real problem and should have credibility that a call to the call centre does not.
