KEY POINTS:
Many broadband providers are promising much and delivering little by way of line speed, a survey of Herald website readers has found.
In fact, several subscribers are forking out for so-called broadband and being lumbered with not much more than dial-up pace.
Last week's survey by nzherald.co.nz asked readers with broadband to select the Auckland server of speedtest.net, run the quick test of their connection speed, then tell us the results.
The accompanying graph shows that internet providers often do not provide what they promise. Some users said the service was of "Third World" standards.
Internet speed is affected by the amount of online traffic. Connection speed will slow down at busy times of the day - like late afternoon - and be fastest at non-peak times.
Users should expect a download speed of over 2 megabits per second at worst but many of those who undertook the test reported speeds of under 1Mbps.
Wireless provider Woosh claims to deliver speeds up to 40 times faster than dial-up but only 18.2 per cent of its customers logged test results in the 1500Kb-3Mb range.
The survey's stars were TelstraClear, with its Wellington-region cable service, and Tauranga-based Netsmart. Both had the bulk of their subscribers over the 1.5Mb mark and many over the magical 3Mb mark.
David Diprose, ihug's technology head, blamed Telecom's low investment in the network for the provider's lacklustre results. Recent OECD figures put telco investment in New Zealand below the international average.
"All DSL broadband runs on Telecom's network and every ISP experiences problems with congestion in the backhaul (the backbone of the network)," he said.
When asked if customers should be happy with their connection speeds, he said: "The bulk of the respondents report download results between 300Kb and 3Mb. This is in line with what we'd expect from Telecom's network given the current state of the backhaul and the congestion on the network."
Telecom said there had been a 400 per cent increase in traffic through its networks in the past two years.
It said: "This volume has been especially fuelled by the advent of media-rich web content through sites such as YouTube and MySpace.
"It's an unfortunate but true factor of the technology that when you put everyone on maximum possible speeds, for some customers the speed unfortunately gets slower."
Mr Diprose said the opening of Telecom's local network would enable providers to control the service it passes on to subscribers.
"ihug is looking forward to the day we can unbundle and put our own equipment in the exchanges - then we can control the customer experience and deliver faster speeds and more certainty around capacity," he said.
Telecommunications User Association chairman Merv Altments said New Zealand was well behind the rest of the world and that would start to impact on the economy.
As video and audio content increased, New Zealanders were starting to see the limitations of many broadband services. "It's all right for grandma and grandpa to send an email, but if you want to do anything serious ... if you're trying to run a business, it is not up to speed."
