Broadband Speeds in New Zealand

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Pollik

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Wannabe Geek

Topic # 16237 1-Oct-2007 00:38

I am in a similar position to Mike Bray http://www.geekzone.co.nz/forums.asp?ForumId=49&TopicId=13078 in that I am looking to come to New Zealand from the UK. I was disappointed (although there is nothing I can do about it) about the reported standard of broadband there.

It made me smile, somewhat, because, in Europe, UK is a bit of a laughing stock (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/09/29/nspeed129.xml) and reading that thread made me count my blessings, even though where I live, broadband standard is far lower than the national average.

I am finding it hard to get any sense, from isp websites (even www.telecom.co.nz ) of what speeds I might reasonably expect. They all seem so cagey!!!!

Are there any signs that might indicate NZ upgrading its BB to something like 1500 to 2000 kbps (faster pings might be nice, but is probably not critical)?

Polly

PS Hello from a newbie here!!!!

stu28

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Reply # 89010 2-Oct-2007 00:41

Welcome to Geekzone Polly

I am finding it hard to get any sense, from isp websites (even www.telecom.co.nz ) of what speeds I might reasonably expect. They all seem so cagey!!!!

The speeds that you might reasonably expect is what there website says “as fast as your line allows”, which means you could get 7mbps (700 KB (kilobyte)/s) or less (I have yet to know anyone who has been able to get 7mbps (700 KB (kilobyte)/s)

The sort of speed you will be able to get will depend on a lot of things e.g.: How far you will be from your exchange, if the exchange is overloaded etc… (More on this: http://www.telecom.co.nz/chm/0,6639,204576-203762,00.html)

To give you a real world idea:

I live in south/east Auckland, & I am about 1K from our exchange.

I am on Xtra Go Large (Do a search of these forums to find out more about Go Large as this plan is not all that great).

Normally on a normal file download I can get between 100 – 300 KB/s (although it can be worse) (that depends on where I download the file from, example if I download something from the UK I get less then 100 KB/s)

I just did a speedtest on a local server at www.nzdsl.co.nz @ 12:37 AM NZDT:

And I got this:

Download Speed: 2774 kbps (346.8 KB/sec transfer rate)
Upload Speed: 134 kbps (16.8 KB/sec transfer rate)

Are there any signs that might indicate NZ upgrading its BB to something like 1500 to 2000 kbps (faster pings might be nice, but is probably not critical)?

Is that ADSL2 /ADSL+2 speeds?, if that is ADSL2 /ADSL+2 speeds then you are highly unlucky to see that sort of speed here for a few years yet. (NZ has only just started unbundling its local loop like what happened in the UK)

Where in NZ do you think you may want to live?, as if you are going to live in Wellington, Kapiti or Christchurch then in some areas of those places you can get high speed cable from Telstraclear - http://www.telstraclear.co.nz/residential/inhome/internet/highspeed/

I Hope this helps & if you have any questions let me know

KiwiOverseas66

173 posts

Master Geek

Reply # 89018 2-Oct-2007 08:12

Hi Pollik

welcome to geekzone, and welcome to NZ ( I can say that as a kiwi even though I living overseas at the moment). My suggestion would be to do as much hunting as possible through this forum as you'll find plenty of stories of the kind of connections and ISPs (plus all the associated good and bad news) and what people are getting in the way of performance. IMHO - the usual rules seem to apply:

a) - if you can get a cable connection, its will almost certainly give you better performance compared to DSL (Telstra who provide cable have just been voted NZs faster performing broadband provider I think)?,
b) - obviously if you opt to live in a central city environment you'll be better off then living on a rural property,
c) - investigate all the options (cable, wireless, satellite, etc).

As stu has said - your performance will be dependent on a whole bunch of things. If you opt for DSL and the copper is clean - there's no reason not to expect at least a 2meg (if not better) connection - but there are so many variables. Also, keep in mind the whole broadband issue in NZ is very strongly debated at times (like most countries in the world). Alot of claims can be made without much evidence (and you can read most of them in any of the daily newspapers). You can, however, trust geekzone and will find the folks here a very good at exploding myths. Another option for checking out whose doing what is to check out speedtest.net. This provides a comparison of speed by regions, ISPs, etc for any country you want to look at. Happy hunting!

Aloha

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Reply # 89052 2-Oct-2007 10:15

Pollik: Are there any signs that might indicate NZ upgrading its BB to something like 1500 to 2000 kbps (faster pings might be nice, but is probably not critical)?

Upload or Download?
'Cause I have more then 4000 kbps download speed. So it's upgraded. ;)

I is a kollege stoodent. Bee nice.

freitasm

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Reply # 89054 2-Oct-2007 10:31

stu28: Where in NZ do you think you may want to live?, as if you are going to live in Wellington, Kapiti or Christchurch then in some areas of those places you can get high speed cable from Telstraclear - http://www.telstraclear.co.nz/residential/inhome/internet/highspeed/

Which is much faster than DSL with 10 Mbps plans and soon to have 25 Mbps plans...

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geekiegeek

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Reply # 89063 2-Oct-2007 11:49

I just moved to Telstra 10Mbps on the weekend - did a speadtest at nzdsl and it was off the scale. If you can live somewhere with access to Telstra cable - get it!

When you live your life on Twitter and Facebook, and are only friends with like minded people on Twitter and Facebook, you are not living in the real world. You are living in a narcissistic echo chamber.

My thoughts are my own and are in no way representative of my employer.

JonC

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Reply # 89110 2-Oct-2007 17:00

ADSL plans are compared here: http://ispfind.co.nz/. Note that these quote the best possible speed, and your actual speed will depend on distance from your exchange - similar to the way it works in the UK.

TCL cable plans are here: http://www.telstraclear.co.nz/residential/inhome/internet/highspeed/. These speeds are generally what you'll get - TCL cable seems to be exceeding the promised speeds at the moment. Only available in Wellington and Christchurch.

Zimsar10

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Reply # 89112 2-Oct-2007 17:26

Hi Pollik, welcome to Geekzone. download speed expectations have been covered very well already by other posters, so I won't elaborate on that, but I noticed you did mention ping times, so I will assume you are a gamer.

I am also a gamer, I have my own UT99 Server in New Zealand - NZ Xtreme, which I rent & I ping 35-40ms whilst in game to this server, more often than not I also ping lower than TelstraClear Cable customers. I am on TelstraClear ADSL PDQ MAX/MAX (http://www.telstraclear.co.nz/residential/homeplan/internet/pdq/) with Interleaving turned Off, so this makes a significant difference to my gaming ping (it can reduce gaming ping by up to 50ms). My ping is generally very stable as a result, whilst compared to Pre removal of Interleaving it was not as stable it is now. Interleaving Off is an option with TelstraClear, so you must ask for it to be turned off, when you sign up & they do not advertise this on their website, but I can assure you it is an option. Orcon (http://www.orcon.net.nz/broadband/) is also another possible option, on most of their plans Interleaving Off is off by default.

Finally, depending on which games you actually play, there are many servers available to play on hosted locally, for a variety of gaming genres, a large number can be viewed here for instance: http://www.gamers.net.nz/gaming/servers/list.html

freitasm

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Reply # 89156 2-Oct-2007 20:09

ZIMsar10: I am also a gamer, I have my own UT99 Server in New Zealand - NZ Xtreme, which I rent & I ping 35-40ms whilst in game to this server

That sounds cool... Perhaps you should post in the gaming forum explaining how you go about running a game server - at home, co-location, renting, what's the deal...

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stu28

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Reply # 89197 2-Oct-2007 23:28

http://www.internetchoice.co.nz/

http://www.netchoice.co.nz/

http://broadband.portal.net.nz/

Pollik

2 posts

Wannabe Geek

Reply # 89204 3-Oct-2007 00:26

Wow!!! So many replies!!!

Where am I going to live? I don't know yet - it will depend on where I can find work. My work involves people (I am a counsellor) so it will need to be in or near one of the population centres. I like my own space, so in the UK I live in a rural area, about 10 miles from my nearest city. In NZ, of course, I may not need to live that far out to stay in my comfort zone.

Some of the speeds that have been quoted are reassuring - it gives me heart to look around a bit more. I tend not to take too much notice of ISP websites, they want my business and will always paint the rosiest picture. I keep thinking: "Wouldn't it be cool if ISPs were forced to charge for the speeds actually received by their customers, instead of by claimed maximum speed?"

And to ZIMsar10, yes I am gamer. I played Everquest for about 3 years before giving up MMORPGs for a while. This year, I have played Eve Online and SWG ... but seem to have settled in to WOW. MMORPGs are not especially needy of low pings, but of course they do help.

All I need to do now is get that job!!!!

Polly

EvilSteve

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Reply # 89221 3-Oct-2007 09:09

Is it just me or did my last post come up blank??
it was suppose to say the follwing and quote the link that stu posted.

"2 of the sites you posted above do telstraclear a great dis-service (if thats a word) one of them says that it costs $101 a month for 2mb/2mb 20gig and similar for the other plans.Im on the 20gig plan and even before the 10mb upgrade it was still 4mb and only 69.95 a month

Another of the sites (netchoice i think) states that you must have a phone account with TCL and factors this into the price where as thats only true for 2 of the 6 plans (numbers off the top of my head)"

cyril7

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Reply # 89226 3-Oct-2007 09:43

Hi Pollik, from my observation and recent experience with a two month work visit the UK there is no real difference in BB in NZ or the UK except in possibly a couple of area.

Depending on where you are in the UK your access options are pretty much adsl and cable. The latter cable is more predominant in most metro areas of UK, but only available in very few area of NZ. Due to the fact that cable operators (both here an in the UK) have a different focus on technology its not surprsing that they have quite good backhauls compared to either TelecomNZ or BT. And there is the natural technology advantage of cable last mile delivery that dsl cannot compare to.

ADSL in NZ is no different to the UK, typcial connection speeds/distance to exchange will be pretty much the same. My connection in a rural area of NZ is around 3.5km from the exchange, my modem currently indicates a connection speed of 5696kb/s, speed tests to various speed test servers in NZ range from around 1Mb/s to 5Mb/s with ping times ranging from 90mS to 250mS. Typcial Aus server speed tests are in the 1-3Mb/s region.

Observing posts on this and other NZ forums regarding ADSL speeds does not indicate that my connection is uncommon, and observing posts on UK forums I dont see a hell of a lot of difference either. One issue that often seems to come up is that Telecoms backhauls are too small for the increased demand of ADSL connections, I suspect that compared to BT and other independant UK LLU providers this is still an area that NZ is catching up on, but I suspect Telecom have the message loud and clear. There is a lot of dark fibre that Telecom owns, I suggest as new ADSL2+ DSLAMS are rolled out (as they currently are in major metros) that more will be lit.

Something to keep in mind most Web servers no matter where they are in the world will limit throughput to any immediate connection. From my observation this seems to limit most web speeds to around 1-1.5Mb/s.

Probably the biggest difference is price, we still pay a premium for living in a small community.

Regards
Cyril