Limitless broadband ‘irresponsible’

The high take-up of internet television is slowing some broadband connections to a crawl in the evening.

Wellington researcher TrueNet said broadband speeds appeared to be slowing in the evening as a result of the growing popularity of new ‘‘on-demand’’ television services such as Lightbox, Neon and Netflix.

Network operator Chorus confirmed it had seen an uptick in internet traffic and that demand for capacity was growing at a faster rate than it had anticipated.

‘‘We are still digging into the network data to truly understand the impact,’’ spokesman Nathan Beaumont said.

TrueNet said it had observed a sudden deterioration between 8pm and 10pm, beginning in March.

During the previous six months most internet services had been humming along well at peak times, it said. in a report. ‘‘Both Vodafone and Slingshot had severe copper broadband performance reductions during the peak demand hours of 8pm to 10pm, while Snap and Spark also dropped significantly,’’ Truenet said.

Wainuiomata businessman Steve Galyer, who runs a home-based forestry software business, said he had been forced to stop work during the April school holidays as his internet service became unusable and had also noticed a big impact during the evenings.

‘‘I literally can’t work. I don’t dare go in and start altering a customer’s database, because I don’t know whether I am going to be able to complete the job,’’ he said.

TrueNet director John Butt said that while he couldn’t prove the nationwide peak-time performance drop was due to the rising take-up of internet television, it was the obvious culprit.

‘‘It lines up with the timing of Netflix and other video options coming on stream.’’

Galyer said it was ‘‘irresponsible’’ of Vodafone and other internet providers to offer unlimited data on a network that was already ‘‘creaking at the seams’’.

Beaumont said there were many factors that could impact ‘‘end user experience’’.