Less bangs for the buck
May 29th, 2006 at 6:24 am by David FarrarIn the current broadband debate there has been many comments on whether NZ broadband packages compare favourably with other OECD countries, but a real lack of hard data.
To help correct this, InternetNZ last month commissioned Wairua Research to do a study. In early May they examined 2586 broadband packages from 388 ISPs over 26 OECD countries.
As reported in the Dominion Post, New Zealand offerings on average rank 22nd out of the 26 countries. And before the changes made in April, we would have been last.
On price alone, NZ now ranks quite well. But on performance issues such as speeds and data caps we are well behind overseas countries. We also have far less variety of offerings than many countries.
The full report is available as a pdf (250k) – around 60 pages.
I’ve also included INZ’s press release after the break.
Kiwi broadband just doesn
May 29th, 2006 at 7:32 am
Fewer bangs for the Buck.
Vote:May 29th, 2006 at 7:45 am
An interesting report – just a pity it is so biased in its conclusion or it could be more useful.
Interestingly if you look at virtaully every graph in there NZ performs comparitively well (above halfway) on virtually all of them. Why the low ranking then?
They take every factor [Download + Upload + Monthly Cost + Connection] and average together and then average the sum of that against the Data Cap position. IE they take the one measure in which NZ IS last and weight this as 50% of the final determination.
And STILL only have us 18th for residential connections.
Any one analysing the report objectively I would think would have to conclude that its findings (rather than its flawed conclusions) actually prove NZ is not as bad as everyone tries to make out…
Vote:May 29th, 2006 at 8:01 am
Thankfully the government intervened. Without the government NZ would be a backhole. As we’re also ranked 21 in the OECD list. I suggest the government intervenes quickly here as well by giving every a base salary of 100,000. That should help significantly in our ranking.
Vote:May 29th, 2006 at 8:07 am
I have blogged a longer reply here:
http://iiq374.blogspot.com/2006/05/very-deceptive-broadband-statistics.html
(rather than posting that longer reply in thread + pictures)
Vote:May 29th, 2006 at 9:16 am
Thank you Pedant! (You know you’re in a posh supermarket in the US when it has a “5 items or fewer” line rather than a “5 items or less” one.)
“Less bang….” would also be acceptable, but it’s definitely one or the other.
Vote:May 29th, 2006 at 9:45 am
I looked forward to reading the report, but like iig374 I thought it was biased.
To state
“it is worth noting that ADSL2 technologies are
already appearing in a number of European countries and in Australia, providing significantly higher download speeds to consumers.”
Without mentioning Telecom NZ’s plans with ADSL2 is disengenious & misleading.
I think NZ should do alot better and I think LLU is awesome, but I can’t escape a feeling that Telecom are taking some pretty cheap shots at the moment, I mean they used to offer 6Mb+ download ADSL in 2003 ( I had it ), they could have kept that & “improved” an arbitrary speed ranking from the likes of Internet NZ, but it looks to me like they went for faster speeds overall speeds, which makes sense.
I wish these studies would do something like pick 3 price points ( in NZ dollars exchange rate converted, the bigmac index is dodgey & seriously favours the US ) and compare the offering at those price points, the averages are just tough to analysise without takeup rates.
Finally
“It is noted that the New Zealand DSL network is often reliant on one 2Mbps backhaul link per DSLAM”
All I know is if that’s the case, I’m not part of the often & I’d really like some evidence to back it up, it sounds painfully unrealistic.
Nigel
Vote:May 29th, 2006 at 12:07 pm
David,
It looks like other lobbyists are starting up their own regulation bandwagons, now that the Government has set a precedent with Telecom: Unbundling trial balloon works a treat.
Give them an inch and they’ll take a mile.
Vote:May 29th, 2006 at 5:51 pm
Surely the amount of ‘international’ content in Swedish would limit the overseas download compared to NZ. Remember we have to pay for the 12000 mile cable to Hawaii , I think Swedens cables wouldnt get over Cook Straight.
Vote:At last count the Web content in English exceeds all other languages plus NZ has a very small local content ( TradeMe excepted)