Telstra gains ground in latest ACCC broadband ranking

Vodafone NBN plan
Pictured: Woman using laptop
//The latest Measuring Broadband Report had no major shakeups.
Alex Choros
Dec 13, 2023
Icon Time To Read1 min read

Published on December 12, 2023

The ACCC has released its 23rd Measuring Broadband Australia report, and Launtel has maintained its top spot. The report found Launtel customers receive 103.8% of their NBN plan's maximum speeds during the busiest hours of the day (between 7pm and 11pm). 

Telstra took second place from Exetel, with its customers found to get 101% of maximum plan speeds during busy hours. Exetel customers were right behind, with 100.9%. 

The report covers 11 telcos in an attempt to find the fastest NBN provider. These include Aussie Broadband, Dodo, Exetel, iiNet, iPrimus, Launtel, Optus, Telstra, TPG, Superloop, and Vodafone.

Here's the full breakdown of how they all performed:

Provider
Peak hours
Overall
Overall excluding underperforming connections
Aussie Broadband97.298.9101.6
Dodo98.799.9102.2
Exetel100.9102.7103.8
iiNet97.698.6101
iPrimus98.799.9102.2
Launtel103.8105.8105.8
Optus100.6101.9101.9
Superloop96.998.2100
Telstra101102.7104.5
TPG97.899.1102.5
Vodafone98.199.5101

The report also found that fixed-line NBN customers hit record-setting download speeds during busy hours. Customers achieved 98.8% of their plans' download speeds, up from 98.5% last quarter.

Despite the overall speed increase, the ACCC found that regional customers are more impacted by underperforming services than those in urban areas. 7% of of regional NBN services underperform, compared to 4% of urban services. By and large, limitations with Fibre to the Node are to blame. (Most Fibre to the Node customers will be able to upgrade to Fibre to the Premise by the end of 2025.)

Compare NBN 50 plans from the providers in this report:

The Measuring Broadband Report also includes fixed wireless NBN services, which saw a slight improvement this quarter. Busy hour download speeds were 89.5% of plan speeds, compared to 87.5% in the previous report.

As always, it's worth remembering the scale of the ACCC's testing. The results come from a month-long testing period during September across 1,313 NBN connections. All but 86 of these households have a connection with one of the 95 providers featured in the report. The ACCC reports a 95% confidence level in its results.

This article was originally published on our sister site WhistleOut.

Alex Choros
Written by
Alex Choros is the Group Reviews Editor for Clearlink Australia's local websites - Reviews.org, Safewise, and WhistleOut - and the Managing Editor for WhistleOut Australia. He's been writing about consumer technology for over eight years and is an expert on the Australian telco sector, to the point where he knows far too many phone and internet plans by heart. He also contributes to Gizmodo and Lifehacker, and makes regular appearances on 2GB. Outside of tech, Alex loves long hikes, red wine, and death metal.