Netflix speeds show Turnbull’s NBN is “flatlining”, says Labor

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news The latest Netflix ISP Speed Index shows that Australia’s Internet speeds are “flatlining” and demonstrates the need for a “proper” National Broadband Network, Labor has said.

In a statement, Michelle Rowland, 
Shadow Minister For Communications
, said that Australia’s Internet speeds have dropped from 30th to 60th place globally in Malcolm Turnbull’s time as Prime Minister.

Further, she suggested that the Netflix ISP Speed Index shows how the prime time performance of the major Australian ISPs has “flatlined”.

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“It’s simply not good enough. This is the year Malcolm Turnbull promised he would deliver minimum broadband speeds of 25 Mbps to all Australians. It won’t happen,” Rowland went on. “Instead, Malcolm Turnbull’s flawed roll-out is mired in delay, cost blowouts and disruption and the opportunities offered by quality broadband are being squandered and the cost is massive.”

The Shadow Minister suggested that lagging behind on broadband speeds means jobs that should be created in Australia are “being lost overseas”, technology which relies on broadband “fails to be fostered in Australia”, and companies cannot access and share the information they need.

Labor called on Malcolm Turnbull to “reconsider his ill-fated roll-out” and ensure up to two million more fibre-to-the-premises (FTTP) connections can be delivered “before it’s too late”.

“Labor’s NBN plan is measured, responsible and will ensure more Australian’s can access quality broadband and all its benefits, instead of relying on an outdated copper network, Rowland concluded.

Rowland’s comments flatly contradicted comments made last week by Senator Mitch Fifield, Minister for Communications, who claimed that the same Netflix ISP Speed Index supports the rollout of the NBN under the Coalition Government.

“Thanks to the Coalition’s faster, more affordable rollout the NBN is on track to be connected to all Australian homes and businesses by 2020,” Fifield said, adding that Singapore’s Netflix speed of 3.75 Mbps is “virtually identical” to Australia’s 3.36 Mbps.

Image credit: Parliamentary Broadcasting

34 COMMENTS

  1. That is what you get for blowing the entire fibre budget to deliver what people already suffer with. DSL and HFC, insecure unstable wireless and extremely high latency satellite.

    • If you read the presentation that NBNCo released you will quickly realise that only 14% of Australians are willing to pay for 100Mbps and that the trend is down. Labor choose to create a revenue model with speed tiers which resulted in the Coalition being able to introduce MTM and it having zero effect on 82%.

      If you want faster speeds you could move, but Labor’s flawed plan means RSPs aren’t offering speeds faster than 100Mbps.

      I stillfind it amusing to think that if NBNCo removed speed tiers from FTTN most Australians would find it significantly faster than Labor’s FTTP.

      • Lol or that only 7% on fttn are able to get 100Mbps or that only 32% on 12/1 is less than the 50% labor was expecting and it was the right decision for fttp as we have 66% choosing speeds that fttn has trouble delivering.

        “Could move” so because your fanboy mtm can’t deliver speeds people are choosing lol.

        Lol fttn faster than fttp against but is your used you average calculation you have done for fttp on the current take up of fttn it would be even slower than fttp lol. But then your just showing your fanboy status

        • FTTN delivers 25Mbps, so that is 82% coverage, not 66%. Secondly you’ve stated that on FTTN 7% will achieve 100Mbps, which works out to about 1% of those currently ordering 100Mbps (a continually shrinking group). Lets assume that 50% will be able to connect at 50Mbps. So 82% + 1% (100Mbps) + 2% (50Mbps) equals 85% will be able to achieve their required speed on FTTN without taking any action.

          What fibre fanbois are asking for is a network to be built on which a continually shrinking number of Australians will achieve the top speeds. In today’s economic climate fibre fanbois need to expect to pay for their faster speeds, regardless of the fact that approaching 3 years after NBNCo made 1Gbps plans available, RSPs are not selling plans faster than 100Mbps.

          If you removed the speed tiers on FTTN, then 32% on 12Mbps would receive a significant speed boost. 49% on 25Mbps would receive smaller speed boost, a few lucky people would have connections as fast as FTTP. FTTN faster that FTTP provides a simple example of how completely Labor botched the NBN. Today we could potentially have had 3 million premises connected at 1Gbps and excitement growing, instead we have a mediocre network.

          • Por Mathew doing a Richard and devoid I see not doing math very well.

            25/5-10 47%
            50/20 5%
            100/40 15%
            Add them together well it’s really 67% are picking the 25Mbps or higher consider the 25Mbps is all that then bn is required to deliver.

            No 7% are currently on 100Mbps now like the 14% on fttp are currently on 100Mbps. But then you first standby makes no sense.

            Mtm fanboys like your self like to use those figures where everywhere else in the world it’s the opposite trend NZ is up to 46% on 100Mbps but then they are still building fttp to most of the country still they must be doing it wrong.
            In today economic climate fibre fanboys are already paying for the faster speeds sounds like you want them to pay 100Mbps for the price of 25Mbps.

            Yet you can not order a 1Gbps service on fttn now can we go figure.

            Lol pure speculation on increase speeds can also say the exact opposite too as none would get a speed increase as they have already look at trying to get faster speeds as the nbn is only required to deliver 25Mbps doubt many would achieve much faster than that lol.

            Lol faster than fttp lol showing your fanboy status of the mtm again if you use your speculation on fttp everyone one would get an average of 80Mbps which show you how your pathetic claim really is.

            Lol why would your fanboy mtm do that when 2/3 of the network will have trouble getting 50Mbps let alone 1Gbps lol.

            Mediocre lol you just claim fttn as faster than fttp

          • Sadly, Mathew is obsessed with Turnbull’s current revenue model…but since he is apparently a Turnbull fan, he must call it a “Labor” model, even though the Libs have been using it more than twice as long for commercial revenue.

            It is of course a ridiculous and irrelevant piece of data anyway as speed plans can be changed at the drop of a hat, but this infrastructure will not support proper bandwidth…copper is the weakest link and the toughest to fix.

          • Chas also Turnbull claimed his fttn would be cheaper than fttp but he is charging the same price as fttp

      • Matthew: if you notice Telstra has 51% of the market, the sme percentage of people on 25/5 plans, you might also notice that’s the default plan Telstra put you on, they don’t actually mention speeds tiers at all because they know that fttn cannot be trusted to deliver speed tiers.
        BEFORE mtm everytone was advertising speed tiers and guess what, more people were purchasing them too,
        Also I am not sure how you think we could have 3 million on 1Gbps speed ?fttn wont do over 1200Mbps and only gets close to that speed when its right next to the node ? it will never do 1Gbps speeds on fttn,

  2. Why would Australian and Singaporean Netflix speeds be similar when the later has much larger last mile speeds? Why won’t the speeds decline here (actually increase) as more FTTN brought into the mix?

    Hint: NBNCo’s provisioned CVC @ 1.09mbps per customer (pointed out long ago; fiberartzi abused).

    NBNCo FY16 financial update released today:
    http://www.nbnco.com.au/content/dam/nbnco2/documents/nbn-financial-results-FY2016.pdf

    APRU $43 as predicted, total revenue still doesn’t cover their wages bill, $2.4+b loss and MTM driving rollout exceeding forecasts for the first time in the company’s history (as charted).

    CPP actuals for FTTN under budget, fibre techs over. Classic;-)

    • “Your master plan MTM” (ahem) doesn’t cover wages…

      In that case, better keep dodging… not cheaper ($29.5B – now as much as $70B according to which Luddite you believe) and not faster (25Mbps to all Aussies by 2016 now 2020)…then eh…?

      Classic indeed.

      You’re welcome.

      • @alex dodging? Your fabrication addressed back in 2013 http://zd.net/2bgdzWD

        Lets look at the ARPU figures in greater detail:
        https://www.dropbox.com/s/92p186q164868su/arpu-actuals-v-forecasts.pdf?dl=0

        ARPU tracking just above the new management’s forecasts, trend diverging from Quigley’s (like everything). Positive given 25% CVC price cut (nominal not real) under Morrow and AVC underperforming forecasts (charted previously, Murdoch claiming it didn’t exist). As Jeremy pointed out NBNCo benefiting on less than expected demand for the 12mbps product.

        Last mile speeds matching customer demanded at a fraction of the CPP of fibre. AVC speeds well above provisioned CVC & backhaul (~30:1 contention) offering significant opportunity to address video growth (requires sustained not peak speeds).

        Sorry Alex, I was right all those years ago.

        The policy an expensive folly, but improvements under the new management impressive. Actuals continue to indicate taxpayers will lose tens of billions with their “investment”.

        • So Richard with FTTP at $225 per active connection in revune and FTTN at $85 per active connection. Yet FTTN is charging the same price as FTTP.

        • Addressed… Right all those years ago…?

          What fucking planet do you live on? It obviously isn’t earth and you obviously can’t grasp reality… obviously that trumped (pun intended) up EGO, will never let you.

          Here was the promise again

          $29.5B ready to roll – now as much as $70B according to which Luddite you believe and 25Mbps to all Aussies by 2016 now 2020.

          This is all for an inferior network.

          On your planet you see this as exceeding?

          Amazing

          Apology accepted.

          • Addressed… Right all those years ago…?

            Looks like you actually nailed it years ago Rizz:

            Your are trying to correspond rationally with the irrational. One who’s ideology and personal finances stand in the way of common sense. As such, you are dealing with a person who will tell you one thing today and blindly tell you he didn’t say so the next…:(

            Not much changes with the CFKD, they fear change ;-)

          • Nah Hc, I reckon the best one was when we said our dear friend (who no longer uses his full name) had claimed, “he could have written MTM (or similar words)” and he said… no I didn’t say that…

            And you copy/pasted his exact post from ZD all those years ago (which included his name, he himself had of course posted) which showed that’s exactly what he said…

            So then he lamely tried to divert away from the fact he was completely caught out lying, by just as lamely attempting to then blame you for copy/pasting his full name… yes the full name he himself had posted…

            That’s golden Sandler-esque, so stupid it’s funny comedy, Rupert is charging a premium for, but we get here for free…

  3. The comments by Fifield are out of context. Netflix uses average, not peak, speeds, and Australia falls very short on that measure, which Netflix considers most relevant to video streaming.

    • @t I’d argue the most relevant figure would be the median sustained throughput during peak viewing periods. The numbers presented clearly exclude last mile as the limiting factor, all techs comfortably delivering 25mbps sustained. The bottleneck must be somewhere else, but where? (chuckles)

      • The people out in the country or on RIMs with less than 4Mbps want a word with you about the lack of last mile bottlenecks you’re implying…

    • You know; that figure might not be very representative of broadband speeds in general then.

      Netflix when run to Chrome or desktop PC (and almost all tablets) runs to a maximum resolution of 720p and video bandwidth of ~3.5 megabits.

      You require a 4k Android TV (or other very specific validated device – Nvidia Shield is one) in order to get the 4k stream (25 megabit stream).

      You can these days using Edge or Internet Explorer in Windows 10 get the 1080p 5 megabit stream.
      (I haven’t tested win 8, but win 7 defintely doesn’t get it).

      Which leads me to think that Netflix might need to clarify precisely what they are recording. If its average, I’d be surprised if it would ever truly exceed the bandwidth it would provide to the most common consumer device.

  4. Out of the Horse’s. Mouth Department

    18 November 2015 —

    http://www.cnet.com/au/news/we-need-to-talk-about-net-neutrality-nbn-ziggy-switkowski/

    “….But Switkowski says there is a real possibility that consumer desires around household entertainment may butt up against the needs of “productivity-enhancing businesses.”

    “This will raise the question of whether all packets are equal, the core of a Net neutrality position,” he said. “There are very strong feelings on both sides of that debate and I think that debate will now unfold.

    “We will have to start thinking very differently about the concept of treating all data equally, because to provision sufficient capacity in the network to fully enable Net neutrality you need to build in massive amounts of over-capacity to accommodate usage peaks.”

    Apart from the fact that he makes Turnbull’s silly mistake of assuming the movie production industry is somehow “unproductive” (tell that to Rupert Murdoch, Hollywood, Disney and Netflix) Ziggy slips into an interesting pose… ie. we will soon have to privatise the net because we don’t have adequate capacity to handle usage peaks.

    Gee. I wonder why?

    So apart from that, the NBN’s looking terrific….

  5. FAAAAAARK!

    More retarded hype and myths on steroids from the new entry-level kids on the block! LMAO

    NetFlix will never upstream media to customers at bitrates that are more than the encoded bitrate of individual video titles via the customers selected Plan

    The NetFlix Premium plan, which can deliver UltraHD titles, stream at 25Mbps MAXIMUM even on a 500Mbps connection!
    https://delimiter.com.au/2016/08/12/netflix-figures-back-coalitions-faster-nbn-rollout-says-fifield/#comment-759502

    Non-technical riffraff should never get involved in technology. It’s a way over their heads.

  6. Can someone tell me why we are using Netflix speeds to compare rollouts? Those speeds are pathetic. I mean 3 mbps? Coalition clowns setting the bar low enough to as usual I see.

      • Not much point in Aussies subscribing to other than basic Netflix as there’s only limited content available here now since they’ve started blocking VPN access to their superior overseas content.

    • Well I guess Coalition will use whatever figure backs their plan even if it says nothing about the rollout.

      • I’d suggest using the lack of demand for speeds faster than 25Mbps as sufficient justification for the MTM model.

        • So in the very near future when when demand is higher than the 25Mbps then nbn is required to deliver you expect us all to move to NZ lol considering there demand is a lot higher lol.

        • “I’d suggest using the lack of demand for speeds faster than 25Mbps as sufficient justification for the MTM model”

          Then you’d be a moron, and a disingenuous one at that. You seem to fluctuate between its “meaning” quite a lot…first its the problem with the financial model, now it is a problem with the demand expectations?

          In point of fact, it is meaningless and highly transitory…

          • Then you’d be a moron, and a disingenuous one at that.

            Some may suggest that harsh Chas?

            But having seen this person cherry-pick one estimation from a previous CP (50/12 and posted his rubbish daily at many blogs for many years) and when that backfired (as everyone told hm it would) it was water off a duck’s back… so he now cherry-picks another 25Mbps or less to continually argue over…

            Unbelievable…

            …. as such, you called it absolutely perfectly.

        • @ Mathew…

          That’s very similar to a comment (and I know he’s not here, so I shouldn’t, but :)… that alain made some years ago, when he suggested (to claim FTTP wasn’t necessary) that ADSL speeds ere good enough for everyone then and into the future…

          Funny, even then that claim was IMO ridiculous, but only a few years later it’s been shown as completely ridiculous, especially as he now lauds DOCSIS 3.1 and g.fast upgrades for greater speeds *sigh*

          But it seems (on top of your already ridiculous repetitions of 50/12 being proven wrong, even by, err you..lol) you and he, making ridiculous claims… will never learn eh?

          Why weren’t the iron wires good enough and why didn’t we reuse them?

          You’re welcome

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