The ACCC's push to force telcos to reveal real-world download speeds misses the point, it should demand they fix the problems.
We all know that you can't take your Internet Service Provider's quoted download speeds seriously. Your home HFC cable connection might promise 100 Mbps, but it can still grind to a halt when your neighbours' kids get home from school and hit Netflix. Meanwhile ADSL2+ might offer a theoretical maximum of 20 Mbps over your copper phone line, but you're unlikely to see those speeds unless you live next door to the telephone exchange.
The truth is that your mileage may vary, regardless of the technology used to deliver broadband to your door. Some of these issues are beyond your ISP's control, such as your distance from the telephone exchange or your neighbours' downloading habits. Others are within your ISP's control, such as the condition of the network or the amount of bandwidth they purchase from the network provider to service their customers.
It's been this way for decades but the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission has finally decided to come to our rescue, sort of. Rather than forcing Australia's internet providers to fix the problems which they can control, instead the ACCC simply wants the internet providers to admit how bad things really are.
Here are the six principles which the consumer watchdog wants to see introduced:
- Consumers should be provided with accurate information about typical busy period speeds that the average consumer on a broadband plan can expect to receive
- Wholesale network speeds or theoretical speeds taken from technical specifications should not be advertised without reference to typical busy period speeds
- Information about the performance of promoted applications should be accurate and sufficiently prominent
- Factors known to affect service performance should be disclosed to consumers
- Performance information should be presented in a manner that is easily comparable by consumers, for example by adopting standard descriptive terms that can be readily understood and recognised, and
- Retail Service Providers should have systems in place to diagnose and resolve broadband speed issues
There are a few good ideas in here, like forcing service providers to help you resolve speed issues, but it's impossible to know the broadband conditions that the "average consumer" will experience in "busy periods".
Every home's circumstances are different and conditions fluctuate throughout the day. Giving people an accurate performance forecast on consumer-grade broadband is like insisting that the Minister for Transport tell us all exactly how long it will take each of us to travel to work each day.
Even if the telcos could tell us exactly what to expect from our broadband connections, that doesn't solve the problem. The ACCC believes people are confused about broadband speeds, but that's wrong. Complaints aren't rising because we're confused, we're complaining because we're frustrated – we know about the broadband traffic jams and we want something done about them.
From the ACCC's perspective, it's easier to force the telcos to guess at your real-world speeds – knowing they'll still fudge the numbers – then it is to force the telcos to actually do something about it.
Some broadband traffic jams are due to bumpy roads – the NBN was supposed to fix that but it's turned into a hotch potch mess under Turnbull's Multi-Technology Mix rollout.
Other traffic jams are due to internet providers cutting corners to save money, such as not paying for enough lanes on the freeway or forcing too many homes to share the same off ramp. Rather than forcing these cheapskate internet providers to admit this and do better, the ACCC simply wants them to put up signs telling you how bad the traffic is.
It's a familiar story. A few years ago the Australian Communications and Media Authority threatened to force the free-to-air television networks to start TV shows at the advertised time rather than deliberately run late. Instead the ACMA caved in and let the networks keep messing with the broadcast schedule as long as they were honest about the real starting times (which they're still not).
The ACCC has it all backwards. Don't just force Australia's telcos to tell us exactly how crap our broadband is, force them to do something about it.
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