Ookla report: Aussie Broadband fastest for fixed broadband in Australia

Aussie Broadband is the best internet service provider in Australia for speed, latency and consistency, according to the latest quarterly report from Ookla.

The independent benchmarking report found that Aussie provides the fastest fixed broadband service with an average speed of 88.33. Optus was the next closest sitting on 59.81, iiNet on 59.20 and TPG on 53.93.

Managing Director Phillip Britt attributed the top score to his team for keeping an eagle eye across Aussie’s network.

“We focus on managing our network to avoid congestion – quality networks are a passion of mine and providing enough bandwidth is part of our no bull approach to customer service. We ensure that there is enough capacity no matter what. During COVID, we pre-emptively upgrade our CVC (bandwidth) across the country when lockdowns occur.”

Aussie also came out on top for consistency, with a score of 85.7%.  The consistency test measures the percentage of time that users can get speeds of at least 25/3 Mbps.

“We’ve recently upgraded our CVC bot, which significantly helps with consistency in customer experience.  It monitors all CVC nationally and balances capacity against usage on an ongoing basis. It’s a more sophisticated version of our previous automated network management system, which monitored and upgraded our network to match bandwidth demands from customers,” Phil said.

“We’re big believers in transparency, so we also publish daily CVC graphs so our customers can see how much bandwidth headroom we have in their area,” he said.

The telco also topped the list with the best latency result of just 9 milliseconds.

“Around latency, a lot of it comes down to network design and lots of other factors around the way that we connect to other networks. For example, we have peering arrangements in all the major capital cities across Australia and that provides us with optimum capacity in those networks,” Phil said.

He added that Aussie has large network links into key context providers which helps with user experience.

“We’re also continuing to grow our network with our fibre build, which means that we can control quality and improve our customer experience even more,” he said.

Interestingly, the  Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) released its latest Measuring Broadband Australia, with Telstra ranking top of the list.

Phil said the difference between the two reports could be easily explained.

“Basically, the two reports offer two different testing methodologies. The speed test is based on ad hoc speed test data conducted by a large number of users over varying plans and speed types. In comparison, the Monitoring Broadband Australia is based on a limited number of boxes which potentially limits the scope of the testing.”

“We also have a much larger portion of high speed customers, which helps our results in the Ookla report,” Phil said.

“When it comes to comparing internet data, people often focus on just speed, but the ultimate factor for comparison is consistency of speed. That’s why we’re really pleased to be recognised for not only speed, but also for consistency.

“This recognition wouldn’t be possible without our fantastic staff, who keep us running every single day. A huge thank you to all the team,” he said.