Dunedin tops country for broadband speeds

DUNEDIN City has the highest broadband speed in the country thanks to winning the Gigatown competition.

A Commerce Commission topic paper, released on Thursday, provided background on broadband testing in New Zealand.

The Chorus data used showed that Dunedin had an average connection speed of 265Mbps, significantly higher than all other areas.

The next highest average connection speed was in North Shore City at 81Mbps.

The lowest average speed was 19Mbps in the Waimate, Central Hawkes Bay and Otorohanga districts. Other more rural areas had average speeds of about 21Mbps to 25Mbps.

The average connection speeds were measured on the Chorus network only.

The commission said that in areas where Chorus was not the wholesale fibre provider (such as Christchurch, where Enable was the fibre provider), average speeds might be higher than shown, as Enable’s fibre connections were not included in Chorus’ average.

On average, connection speeds more than doubled between 2015 and 2017. Some areas, like Wellington City, trebled their average connection speed in two years.

The commission’s enhanced broadband testing programme, provided by SamKnows, would check up to 3000 test probes around the country.

The testing should allow for a more detailed picture of broadband performance in New Zealand than previous testing regimes, the commission said.

SamKnows runs testing in more than 40 countries on behalf of telecommunications regulators and retail service providers. Collectively, SamKnows testing programmes cover nearly half of the world’s internet population.

SamKnows expected to start reporting on New Zealand broadband performance testing from October this year.