Big ISPs in Consumer NZ Survey

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dpw

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#27977 13-Nov-2008 09:05

Has anyone noticed the latest wee article in Stuff? It seems somewhat contrary to what most people say on Geekzone forums. I wonder how they came to this conclusion...

EDIT: I was mainly referring to Telecom - they seem to be referred to as "pay your money and get better performance" along with TelstraClear, as opposed to the 2nd tier ISPs.

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freitasm

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#177708 13-Nov-2008 09:11

That's exactly the same question sbiddle posted yesterday on his blog. For example ranking WorldxChange and Xnet when they are the same company. And other things..

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#177712 13-Nov-2008 09:32

I think using the word "satisfaction" is the key here. It's not a scientific measure of whether the performance of an ISP is infact any good.

I could say I'm completely and utterly satisfied with Paradise as an ISP. I never have a need to ring customer support and the performance and speeds are fantastic. VoIP is fantastic due to the low latency and torrents work at 10Mbps during peaktime. IMHO it's the perfect ISP for me.

Ask another person however who has a dodgy spyware ridden PC that affects their internet speeds, has to ring the helpdesk on a regular basis to advice and can't get their wireless router working properly (even though it's nothing to do with their ISP), can't get decent torrent speeds because they can't understand how to forward ports and you'll probably find they rate their ISP very poorly. It's a very subjective comparison.

dpw

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#177718 13-Nov-2008 09:48

That's true - the word "satisfaction" indeed makes it a highly qualitative result. However, the Stuff article did not use that word at all. Instead it has "performance" and "performing" sprinkled throughout, along with "promised speed", "drop-outs", and "customer service". For me, reading at a glance, the word "performance" and "speed" gave a cursory impression of a more quantitative result.

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#177754 13-Nov-2008 11:30

Hard to tell because they don’t give you any of the methodology.

I had a look at the consumer NZ website, and to read the report you have to be a member or pay $10 The bit you are allowed to read mentions this though:

The latest [Epitiro]report is much in line with our results. The smaller regional ISPs were the top performers along with TelstraClear's cable service, while larger nationwide ISPs such as Telecom and Vodafone had the poorest performance levels.

Which doesn’t seem in line with what I have read. Last Epitiro report showed Telecom 3rd place (after TCL on-net and TCL off-net) overall, not ‘poorest’ by any means.

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#177761 13-Nov-2008 11:50

I think its crazy that telecom and telstra are so low, but xnet (and WxC =/ ) with all their issues manage to get 4th and 6th. Don't think this survey is really representitive of the real world.

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#177768 13-Nov-2008 12:09

eXDee: I think its crazy that telecom and telstra are so low, but xnet (and WxC =/ ) with all their issues manage to get 4th and 6th. Don't think this survey is really representitive of the real world.

From memory (I was reading the magazine yesterday) the survey sample represented around 400ish WxC users in total and around 4000 Telecom users. That is a fairly good sample size and was conducted during September.

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#177837 13-Nov-2008 18:12

WellI guess you didnt get the full report then as a lot of empassis was placed on customer service and waiting times on the phones. Smaller ISPs do have a distinct advantge as its easier to get say 10 great helpdesk guys than it is to get 150 good helpdesk guys. However wait times should or you'd think would be less for larger ISPs.

I guess it all comes down to what you value, but clearly the respondance preferred Inspire, Actrix and Maxnet as they do each year this survery is run.

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#178052 14-Nov-2008 19:09

I read the consumer survey.

Seems to me that customer support staff attitude and the like was a bigger factor than performance on the net itself. I've posted about this elsewhere, being an Xnet Naked DSL customer. The fact is that WXC/Xnet can't provide you a connection that can put through streaming video from international websites (eg Youtube) without rebufferning constantly during busy periods. This is not a line speed issue, but simply inadequate throughput from their back end. The big players appear to offer better performance than this.

Leaves me thinking that the bulk of consumer members surveyed are largely not very demanding in terms of network performance. If they were I think Xnet would be near the bottom..