A recent report by the Commerce Commission of New Zealand has found that most of the biggest broadband internet providers deliver the slowest and most unreliable services.

High speed connections from Telecom, Vodafone and Slingshot have all been reported as delivering average or below average scores in terms of connection speeds and overall reliability for the March 08 quarter. Smaller internet service providers such as Compas and Snap out-performed the average scores of the bigger providers.

Telstraclear (who offer both DSL and Cable networks) trumped all competition in the three main centres with the highest scores, but were beaten in Hamilton and Dunedin – where they do not have their own network and resell Telecom’s DSL services. Orcon was the highest-scoring provider in these cities.

The report assessed variables such as time to connect, download and upload times, e-mail receivership times and packet loss levels.

A few months back I received an email response to an NZS.com newsletter article about the government’s plans to increase broadband connection speed funding over the next few years. He made a great point – while we are constantly assessing and evaluating internet speeds in the larger cities, the New Zealand media rarely pay any attention to the often abysmal speeds (or even existence of a high-speed service) in smaller towns and rural areas throughout the country. Will the big ISP’s ever pay serious attention to the internet needs of those off the beaten track in New Zealand (anywhere away from Auckland, Wellington or Christchurch?).

If you’re a rural internet user let us know what you think – how is your service?

Image from Flickr.

High speed Internet is finally gathering momentum in New Zealand – a recent Statistics New Zealand survey found that the total number of NZ broadband Internet users has now overtaken the number of users with dial up Internet connections.

Broadband uptake increased by 14.4% in the six months from March to September 2007, bringing the number of Kiwi broadband users close to 830,000. During the same period, dial up connections dropped by 8.6% to 675,800.

Despite this landmark in our Web-olution, the growth rate for broadband uptake has actually slowed over the last year – from 28.6% for the six months to September 2006, and 18.5% for the period from September 2006 to March 2007.

Take a look at the bigger picture: over the last two years, we’ve seen New Zealand broadband grow from just 9 to a significant 19.6 out of every 100 Kiwi Internet users.

Get connected, check out broadband deals and compare broadband providers in NZ and help us reach the next milestone – 25% of all Kiwis with high speed connections to the Web. And we do still count, even though we’re just a small drop in the ocean of 427 million Internet users worldwide!

New Zealand Internet Service Providers are doing all they can to convince us that broadband is better, but when it comes to the crunch, we’re not happy.

Fewer than 50% of Xtra customers are satisfied with the service they receive from Telecom, according to a Consumers’ Institute survey of 10,000 Internet users. For the third year in a row, Xtra was placed last in the battle of the Internet providers, with just 42% of customers rating its performance as ‘good’ or ‘very good.’ Satisfaction has dropped from 55% in 2006 and 78% in 2005. Xtra has faced a number of crises over the last year – earlier in the year Xtra’s merger with Yahoo caused massive glitches with email service, and on Sunday, outages meant emergency service staff were forced to use pen and paper…

The news wasn’t good for New Zealand ISPs in general either: dissatisfaction is rife amongst Internet customers. As ISP’s promise more, expectations are raised and so too, it seems, is disappointment. Broadband speed and the cost of Internet plans were the main areas of dissatisfaction. Consumers’ Institute chief executive Sue Chetwin says:

“Broadband users have been promised so much in terms of faster speeds, larger data caps, and cheaper pricing, but our survey shows that most customers think they’re getting a rough deal. And compared with overseas, there’s no doubt they are.”

Telecom has said it is disappointed with the survey results (well, they were hardly going to be over the moon, were they?) and believe a recently announced $1.4 billion investment plan will result in a faster broadband technology platform for New Zealand customers.

On the upside, Inspire found favour with its customers for the fourth year in a row, inspiring 94% of customers to report they were happy with the ISP’s performance. Actrix and Maxnet also rated very well.

Early this month, Statistics New Zealand released the Internet Service Providers Survey from March 2007, providing fresh information on broadband usage in New Zealand.

Key to the report is the finding that more Broadband users are on faster download speeds, with 2 – 10Mps now the most common speed (as at 31st March 2007), a shift from the previous six months where 512kbs – 2Mbps was the predominant download speed.

The Broadband vs Dial-up battle is tipped to switch soon with 739,000 subscribers on dial-up (down 4.1% from six months earlier) and 724,600 using broadband (up 18.5%).

On the email front, 98.4% of Internet subscribers have now adopted email filtering products from their ISP (including both free and charged).

The next instalment of the Internet Service Provider Survey will be released in March 2008.

Looking to get connected? Find NZ Internet Service Providers in the NZS.com directory.