The Minister for Communications, Senator Mitch Fifield, announced on 7 April 2017 that the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) will commence a broadband performance monitoring and reporting (BPMR) program from mid-2017. The ACCC had been seeking Government approval to commence such a program from the time that it completed an initial pilot program in 2015. The BPMR program is seen by the ACCC as an important complement to the other work the ACCC is doing in this area. For example, earlier this year the ACCC published a set of principles to assist internet service providers in ensuring that their advertising claims about broadband speeds are not misleading (see Compliance activity in relation to broadband speed claims: On the ACCC's agenda).
The BPMR program, which will run for 4 years at a cost of approximately $7 million, will use a hardware based testing device to sample speeds of a representative group of fixed-line broadband services supplied over the National Broadband Network (NBN). Testing will also be conducted of alternative networks, but on a smaller scale. The results of the monitoring – which will be undertaken in approximately 4,000 households – will be made publicly available. This means that consumers will be able to use the data in selecting services and also to monitor whether they are receiving the speeds they are paying for. It is thought, based on the experience in other jurisdictions which have undertaken similar programs, that the increased transparency provided by the reporting will improve competition in the retail services market. The ACCC will be able to use the data to assess whether advertising claims made by internet service providers of the speeds of their services are accurate. Importantly, the BPMR program will allow an assessment of whether slow NBN speeds are caused by network issues or, alternatively, by the actions of internet service providers themselves, for example, where a provider does not purchase sufficient capacity on the NBN to support use by its customers during peak periods.
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