NZ broadband hindered by lack of infrastructure out of Auckland: regulator

Tuesday 18th May 2010

New Zealand’s broadband is getting better, but more money needs to go into backhaul and core infrastructure outside Auckland, according to the Commerce Commission.

The regulator’s report on New Zealand broadband quality for the six months through December last year, the first time the commission has taken the reporting in-house, found all cities tested showed an improvement in national and international web browsing speeds due to better storage techniques for overseas content by local internet service providers, known as caching. Still, the report found ISPs kept much of their key equipment housed in Auckland, and this limited performance outside the country’s biggest city.

“The Commission’s intention with the report is that ISPs will be able to see their relative performance against their competitors in different locations and identify methods to improve that performance for the benefit of consumers,” said Telecommunications Commissioner Ross Patterson in a statement. “The focus of the report is on web browsing speeds because web browsing is the most common activity undertaken by internet users.”

Last September, the previous quarterly report showed New Zealand’s broadband performance had steadily improved, primarily due to Telecom’s infrastructure spending which boosted its caching capability. Excluding the investment by the country’s biggest phone company, there was a lack of major new investment by other ISPs.

In the latest report, the regulator introduced benchmarks for ISPs on browsing speeds, availability of service and variability of speed by time of day, which made for mixed reading. Six of eight ISPs met the target for national browsing in Auckland in the three months through December, while no ISPs out the eight in Hamilton met them.

Two out of 10 ISPs met browsing benchmarks in Wellington, while one out of 10 met them in Christchurch, and zero out of eight met them in Dunedin. Four of 15 providers met the international browsing benchmark set by the Commerce Commission, while 12 out of 15 ISPs met availability targets and six of 15 met variability goals. Seven of the 15 providers were using caching successfully in the period.

The regulator didn’t name individual ISPs in the report, though it may do so in future report.

The data, provided by Epitiro Technologies which previously wrote the report, found broadband services purchased from Telecom Wholesale showed little difference in speed to those services bought from Chorus via the unbundled copper local loop (UCLL). The regulator said backhaul may be a factor that changes an ISP’s speed achieved by buying the UCLL service through another provider.

TelstraClear’s cable service “achieved significantly better web browsing speeds” using cable when compared with digital subscriber line (DSL) services, the report said.

In a separate report, the Commerce Commission set out the new disclosure requirements for Telecom when it prepares its regulatory financial statements under its required accounting separation.

“The commission’s analysis of Telecom’s first regulatory financial statements raised issues about some of the methodologies used in the preparation of the statements, particularly in relation to the attribution of income and expenses and valuation of Telecom’s fixed assets,” Patterson said. “These revised requirements address these issues.”

Businesswire.co.nz

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