Broadband Speeds

The NZ Herald has published the results of readers sending in their broadband speed tests, and they are interesting reading.  The survey is not fully scientific, but there are still some clear differences it seems.

They have divided the results up into seven speed bands, which makes comparisons difficult.  I’ve summarised these into two bands – under 1500k and over 1500k.  Results for each ISP in terms of under/over is:

1. Maxnet 12.5%/87.5%
2. Orcon 13.1%/86.9%
3. World Exchange 17.7%/82.3%
4. Netsmart 25%/75%
5. TelstraCclear 25.1%/75%
6. Xtra 28.5%/71.4%
7. Slingshot 52.9%/47.15
8. Ihug 66.5%/33.2%
9. Woosh 81.8%/18.2%
10. ICONZ 100%/0%

I’d caution that the total sample size for the ISPs are pretty small.  By doing some reverse maths I calculate the following number of responses:

1. ICONZ 5
2. Maxnet 8
3. World Exchange 17
4. Netsmart 20
5. Slingshot 34
6. TelstraClear 56
7. Woosh 22 (or 66)
8. Orcon 46 (or 92)
9. Ihug 69 (or 118)
10. Xtra – no obvious number but presumably more than any other ISP

Now another calculation I’ve done is the average speed.  I calculate this by taking the midpoint of each speed range and assigning 7500K to the range above 5000 (being midpoint of 5000 and 7500 which is the max ADSL speed).

1. Netsmart 3.7 Mb/s
2. Maxnet 3.5 Mb/s
3. World Exchange 3.2 Mb/s
4. TelstraClear 3.0 Mb/s
5. Orcon 2.9 Mb/s
6. Xtra 2.6 Mb/s
7. Slingshot 1.6 Mb/s
8. Ihug 1.4 Mb/s
9. Woosh 1.2 Mb/s
10. ICONZ 0.8 Mb/s

Again the Herald survey was not full representative but I think it does still tell a story with some of those differences.