The Epitiro/IDC report on New Zealand broadband quality for the December 2008 quarter has been released. The report examines the quality of broadband services provided by New Zealand's internet service providers (ISPs) as measured by Epitiro from central sites using the highest speed residential plans.

Epitiro measures a broad range of factors to create an index that is intended to represent the overall performance of ISPs in delivering broadband services. Improvements in the index usually indicate investment in network infrastructure.

Commerce Commission Telecommunications Branch Director Osmond Borthwick said, "Epitiro's broadband measurement processes were upgraded in the December quarter to use ADSL2+ technology, to reflect the fact that nearly 60 percent of DSL capable lines have been upgraded to ADSL2+. While this means it is difficult to directly compare performance with the previous quarter, Epitiro's report indicates that the spread of ADSL2+ technology will significantly improve broadband performance as more lines are upgraded and more consumers upgrade to ADSL2+ modems."

The Commission is pleased to note that TelstraClear's cable broadband performance, which does not use DSL technology, showed a significant improvement in performance in the December quarter.

Epitiro/IDC reports further investment in the December quarter by most of the larger ISPs to increase the effective bandwidth available to their customers.

The report is designed to provide New Zealand consumers, businesses and industry observers with independent measurements of the changes in the quality of broadband services over time. The results should be viewed as indicative rather than representative of broadband performance across the country.

This report forms part of an ongoing data series that, over time, is intended to provide valuable information on service performance.

The full report is available on the Commission's website www.comcom.govt.nz at Market Monitoring/Monitoring and Reporting.

Background

The Commission contracts Epitiro to provide broadband quality reports. As part of Epitiro's work in the area, Epitiro provides services to internet service providers (ISPs) enabling them to benchmark customer performance across dial up, cable, broadband and wireless connections.

The ISP-I™ platform and technology from Epitiro emulates an internet user's activity across eleven sites. The sites are located in Auckland, Hamilton, Wellington, Christchurch and Dunedin. It measures twelve ISPs every fifteen minutes on a 24-hour basis across the eleven sites. The platform gathers a range of detailed statistics on seven parameters - synchronisation speed, cached and non-cached HTTP download speeds, ping, DNS, packet loss and email delivery times for independent analyses.

Digital Subscriber Line (DSL) is a data communications technology that allows broadband to be delivered over a copper line. ADSL1 is an early standard, with maximum download speeds capped at 8Mbps and typical rates below 5Mbps. ADSL2+ is a newer, and faster standard that can deliver a theoretical top download speed of up to 24Mbps, with users typically experiencing between 8Mbps and 15Mbps. However ADSL2+ performance is highly dependent on how far the signal has to travel over the copper connection to the home - the greater the distance, the slower the speed. Other factors like the nature of the broadband plan, the modem, the quality of computer and home wiring also affect the user's experience.

Amendments to the Telecommunications Act 2001 have explicitly empowered the Commerce Commission to monitor the performance of telecommunications markets and report on this work. Accordingly, the Commission has been producing regular monitoring reports, including reporting on the quality of broadband services.

The views and opinions in the Epitiro/IDC report do not necessarily reflect those of the Commerce Commission.