Comms Alliance Says No To Broadband Monitoring Plan
0Overall Score

The Communications Alliance which represents telcos including Telstra, Optus and Vodafone, has rejected calls by the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission to implement a national broadband speed monitoring service before a cost-benefit analysis is conducted.

According to the alliance, the scheme could create expensive new burdens for the $40 billion-a-year sector.

Its announcement follows completion of a trial by ACCC in which some 90 Melbourne-based volunteers had their fixed-line broadband connections monitored for around three months.

The volunteers installed a hardware probe on their home broadband connection which monitored their download/upload speeds, Web browsing time, latency, packet loss and video streaming quality.

ACCC said that if the scheme was fully implemented across Australia it would help inform consumers about real-world broadband performance and help identify Internet providers who failed to deliver advertised broadband speeds.

But the Comms Alliance has said the program needs to be accurately costed before being implemented. 

Said alliance chief John Stanton: “The growing diversity of access technologies within the NBN multi-technology mix, the need to divide the results by region and the fact that there are more than 400 broadband service providers in Australia may add up to a very expensive solution – the cost of which will ultimately fall on taxpayers or Internet consumers.”