Stephen Gale: "Fibre plans perform the best"

Most New Zealanders can reliably stream high definition video most of the time according to the Commerce Commission's second new style broadband monitoring report.

Telecommunications Commissioner Dr Stephen Gale says; “Fibre plans perform the best, being able to deliver 4k video streaming from Netflix over 99 percent of the time”.

SamKnows, which conducts testing for the Commerce Commission, produced the Measuring Broadband New Zealand Autumn Report. It includes speed and performance comparisons across copper, both ADSL and VDSL, fibre and fixed wireless technologies.

We have a winner

All the technologies perform well, but there is a clear winner. Gale says; “We are pleased that all technologies are delivering a good video streaming experience — even ADSL, the slowest technology, is capable of delivering HD video around 75 percent of the time.

"However, for households with multiple people streaming, downloading files, or gaming at the same time, fibre plans will give the best results.”

Users on New Zealand's UFB network's “Fibre Max”, that is gigabit broadband services, saw average speeds of 550.3 Mbps during the three month period, and 524.7 Mbps during peak times.

Meanwhile users on the 100 Mbps fibre plans achieved speeds of 93.2 Mbps, and 91.3 Mbps during peak times. This compares to 41.8 Mbps and 40.9 Mbps for VDSL, 24.3 Mbps and 18 Mbps for fixed wireless. The few remaining users on ADSL saw 9.3 Mbps and 9.1 Mbps.

Another buyer tilts at Vocus

AGL, an Australian energy company, has made a bid for Vocus Communications. It puts the price at a shade over A$3 billion just days after EQT pulled the plug on its A$3.3 billion offer. AGL is a power generator and retailer, the company told the Australian Financial Review its bid is based on the idea that "energy and data streams were converging".

Chorus green lights Rugby World Cup

Chorus says its network is ready to handle the high definition streaming video demands of the Rugby World Cup. The company says it has prepared for a 44 percent traffic surge, a move which it says meant bringing forward two years of normal planned network capacity growth.

In preparation, more than 2 Tbps of extra handover capacity has been added to the network. That's enough for 400,000 more full HD video streams.

Chief customer office Ed Hyde says; “We’ve invested heavily to maintain a congestion-free network since video streaming took off in 2015. Our preparations in advance of the Rugby World Cup mean there will be no buffering on our modern network despite the anticipated volume of simultaneous HD video streams.”

Backhaul regulation off the agenda

The Commerce Commission says there is no need to regulate backhaul services. It found the backhaul market is "generally competitive". While it went to say this isn't the case in some provincial areas where Chorus is the only provider and some links are more expensive, there is no evidence of any impact on end users.

In its report the commission says; “RSPs tend to set and market nationwide prices for the different broadband packages, end-users in areas with high intra-regional backhaul prices are not subject to higher retail broadband prices than end-users in areas with lower backhaul prices."

Telecommunications Commissioner Stephen Gale says; “The new regulations may bring some of the relevant backhaul services under Chorus’ overall revenue cap, come January 2022".

Enable hits 100,000 connections

Enable says it connected its 100,000th customer this week. The Christchurch region fibre wholesaler has doubled the number of connections in less than two years. This means the fibre take up rate in Enable's area is now six out of every ten broadband lines.

Spark adds boxing, golf, e-sports and athletics to Sport roster

Spark Sport has signed a two year deal with boxing rights distributor, Protocol Sports Marketing, to show 24 live and on demand world championship fights over the next two years. It starts this weekend with Josh Warrington versus Kid Galahad taking place in the UK.

The company has also signed a deal with Lagardère Sports for rights to golf, athletics and e-sports. This includes the 2019 and 2020 Emirates Australian Open golf tournament. Also on the menu is the Blast Pro Series of e-sports and the 2019 and 2020 IAAF World Challenge in 2019 and 2020.

MyRepublic warned over levy filing

The Commerce Commission issued a formal warning to MyRepublic for not meeting its statutory obligations to provide information for the Telecommunications Development Levy.

It says the company has been compliant in the past and the move was not serious. However, Telecommunications Commissioner Dr Stephen Gale says;
“Where one company doesn’t meet its obligations, it can affect all the others that have".