The performance of New Zealand's broadband services is continuing to improve a report by the Telecommunications Commissioner finds.
"Increased competition from unbundled copper local loop services has improved broadband performance," Ross Patterson said.
The report on broadband performance for the six months to December 2010 showed minimum, average and maximum web browsing speeds to the ordinary digital subscriber line (DSL) had all increased, with maximum speed increasing from 5.5 Megabits or millions of bits per second (Mbps) to 6.5Mbps.
The Government is investing up to $1.5 billion in an "ultrafast" open-access fibre service providing download speeds of 100 Mbps and upload speeds of at least 50 Mbps to 75 percent of (mostly urban) New Zealanders over 10 years.
But its target for 80 percent of rural households and businesses is only access to broadband services of 5Mbps or better and with the remaining 20 percent on speeds of 1Mbps within six years.
Dr Patterson said TelstraClear's fibre-optic cable network provided the best browsing performance (in Wellington and Christchurch where it is available), but was closely followed by service providers using copper local loop lines -- the normal telephone lines.
The worst performing line type was the wholesale Telecom broadband service, which had speed limitations that affected average browsing speed.
Average web browsing speeds dropped with increasing distance from key internet servers in Auckland.
Average speed at a test site in Dunedin was below 3Mbps, compared to speeds of 4Mbps to 5Mbps at comparable sites further north.
And there was a marked reduction in network availability over the six month period, with all tested internet service providers falling below the Commission's benchmark at times.
Telecom and Vodafone were best, each failing in only one of the six months.
The best recorded performance was less than 20 minutes down-time during a month, while the worst monthly performance was a total of just over 7 hours out.
TelstraClear had four consecutive months of failing to meet the target, which effectively meant each service provider was allowed only 43.2 minutes a month when the test web page could not be downloaded. In comparison, the public telephone network is usually only unavailable for between 26 seconds and 4.3 minutes per month.
