End of an era: Australia's NBN watchdog can finally stand down

The Measuring Broadband Australia program was established because Australia had a broadband performance problem; now it's ending because that problem has largely been solved, writes Paul Budde.

THE CLOSE OF an important chapter in Australia's telecommunications history has been marked by the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) decision to end its Measuring Broadband Australia program.

When the program was launched in 2017, it addressed a genuine problem. Australian consumers were paying for broadband services that often failed to deliver the speeds they had been promised. The National Broadband Network (NBN) rollout was still mired in controversy, evening congestion was common and customers had little way of independently verifying whether they were receiving the service they were paying for.

The ACCC's monitoring program brought much-needed transparency to the market. It provided an independent benchmark of broadband performance and helped hold both NBN Co and retail service providers accountable.

Its closure is therefore significant. It signals that the broadband performance problems that prompted its creation have, by and large, been resolved.

For more than a decade, I have argued that two policy decisions were undermining Australia's broadband ambitions. The first was the reliance on Fibre-to-the-Node (FTTN), which left the last section of many connections dependent on ageing copper infrastructure. The second was the Capacity Virtual Circuit (CVC) charging model, which encouraged retail providers to limit capacity and contributed to the evening congestion that frustrated so many consumers.

The ACCC's final report effectively confirms those concerns. The gradual replacement of FTTN with fibre and the removal of capacity-based charging have dramatically improved broadband performance across the country.

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According to the final Measuring Broadband Australia report, fixed-line NBN services now deliver an average of 99.4% of advertised download speeds during the peak evening period between 7 pm and 11 pm. Across all hours of the day, average download performance effectively reaches 100% of plan speeds.

These figures are a far cry from the early years of the program, when broadband services commonly delivered only 80 to 85% of their advertised speeds during busy periods.

Equally important, the differences between retail service providers have narrowed considerably. In the program's early years, some providers consistently outperformed others. Today, the ACCC reports far less variation in performance, meaning consumers are much more likely to receive the speeds they expect, regardless of their chosen provider.

The report also highlights a sharp decline in the number of underperforming services. In 2018, almost 14% of fixed-line NBN connections were classified as underperforming. That figure has now fallen to just 5.6%.

Not surprisingly, many of the remaining problem services are still found on FTTN connections. More than 10% of FTTN services in the monitoring sample were still classified as underperforming. This reinforces the case for the ongoing fibre upgrade program, which is steadily replacing copper-based connections with full fibre services.

The report also demonstrates how far Australia's broadband infrastructure has evolved. High-speed NBN Home Ultrafast services on 1,000 Mbps plans delivered average download speeds between 861 Mbps and 875 Mbps throughout the day, with nearly 80% of tests achieving at least 900 Mbps.

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Just as importantly, the final report provides a broader view of connectivity in regional and remote Australia by including fixed wireless and satellite services.

NBN fixed wireless services continue to improve, delivering almost 90% of advertised speeds across all hours and around 84% during peak periods. While not matching the consistency of fibre-based services, the results demonstrate substantial progress compared with earlier generations of wireless broadband.

The emergence of low Earth orbit (LEO) satellite services has arguably been the most significant development in regional communications. The report shows Starlink delivering average download speeds above 230 Mbps across all hours and around 200 Mbps during busy periods.

For many Australians living beyond the reach of fixed-line infrastructure, this represents a transformation in connectivity that would have been difficult to imagine when the monitoring program began. While traditional geostationary satellite services such as Sky Muster remain important, the arrival of low Earth orbit satellite systems has fundamentally changed the broadband landscape for remote communities.

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The ACCC has emphasised that the end of the program does not mean the end of oversight. Broadband providers remain responsible for delivering the performance they advertise, and the regulator will continue monitoring service quality through other reporting mechanisms.

Nevertheless, the conclusion of Measuring Broadband Australia should be recognised as a success.

The program was established because Australia had a broadband performance problem. It is ending because that problem has largely been solved.

No network is perfect and some challenges remain, particularly where legacy copper infrastructure is still in use. But Australia now has a broadband ecosystem that consistently delivers the performance consumers purchase. Combined with continuing fibre upgrades and the rapid development of satellite technologies, the country is in a far stronger position than it was a decade ago.

In that sense, the ACCC's final broadband monitoring report is more than a collection of performance statistics. It marks the end of an era in Australian telecommunications and confirms that the long struggle to build a reliable national broadband infrastructure is finally delivering the outcomes that consumers were promised.

Paul Budde is an IA columnist and managing director of independent telecommunications research and consultancy, Paul Budde Consulting. You can follow Paul on Twitter @PaulBudde.