Fibre proves worth in independent tests

Results from TrueNet’s October 2013 Broadband Report (no longer online) show fibre services deliver the data highest speeds in New Zealand. That comes as no surprise. After all, speed is one of the reasons to move from copper delivered broadband to a fibre service.

Other reasons to switch from one technology to the other are reliability and consistency. Truenet’s results show fibre scoring on both those measures.

The report says: “30Mbps fibre service is reliable and predictable. For both Orcon and Snap, TrueNet measure peak evening speeds at better than 99 percent of the off-peak speed.  Although peak speed of 27 or 28Mbps is less than the advertised 30Mbps.

Faster broadband is better - full stop

This is interesting in the light of reader comments on something I wrote recently about the slower UFB services not being worth considering.

For the record I have Telecom NZ’s VDSL service – fibre isn’t due to be connected to my house in the next three years. The service is delivered from a roadside cabinet about 700m away. I consistently see download speeds of around 36Mbps – although I’ve only checked a few time, there’s no noticeable mid-evening drop off. Perhaps I’m lucky.

Fibre is clearly delivering great performance. TrueNet says: “Test results show Fibre 50Mbps/100Mbps to be significantly faster than any other product, but still under reaching the advertised speed”.

TrueNet also reports: “Telecom VDSL is now the best performing VDSL provider” and “international latency has increased significantly from last month, with results across all technologies showing increases reaching over 200 milliseconds.”