- Saturday, 11 July 2009
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I think we are on the verge of a new era of partnership with government - Steve 'Understatement' Ballmer
British broadband worse than New Zealand's
FORMER British colony New Zealand now has a better broadband infrastructure than the mother country.
While Britain lives in the fantasy that New Zealand is still like it was 20 years ago, the South Pacific country has been more advanced than Blighty since the 1980s. Now it looks like its broadband system is eclipsing the UK despite having huge infrastructure problems.
Consultancy Epitiro Technology looked at the performance of broadband connections using computers connected to a dozen ISPs in 11 cities.
It found that New Zealand's broadband 'quality index' rose 22 per cent in the June quarter to 2920, while Britain's fell 10 per cent to 2749.
Cable-based ISPs in Wellington and Christchurch won most of the plaudits while an outfit called Orcon was the best for Auckland.
The Kiwis have been chucking money into improving backhaul links and international capacity.
British broadband standards have fallen as competition increases. Blighty has seen strong growth in unbundled lines, from 3.7 million in December to more than 4.5 million by August.
But for some reason growth in competition has fragmented the market, leading to a wide variation in service performance.
So when a country of four million covering territory of a similar size cut in two by a treacherous stretch of water can deliver something better, they must doing something that the Empire can't manage. Soon Kiwis will be coming to Kings Cross and telling the UK that the country is just like New Zealand was in the 1980s. µ
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sorry to disagree, but i having been using Orcon's network in Auckland, NZ for the last 6 months, and while sometimes i hit high speeds the connection and network is horrendously inconsistent. I was on IHUG prior to that and still not good. I used to have NTL cable at home back in the north east england a few years ago and i must say i miss it....
Makes me laugh when i hear what the British think about little New Zealand. Chip & Pin has been here for 2-3yrs now. We have had it in NZ for 15+ years now. I have been in the UK for 2.5years now and I have been very shocked to how bad broadband is over here. Completely useless at night when everyone goes home and checks their emails.. The only time that you get decent speeds is in the middle of the night when everyone is asleep! Long has the UK needed an upgrade to their infrastructure...
When you have a communications regulator that doesn't regulate, and an advertising regulator that thinks blatant lies are acceptable.

The fastest normal aforable broadband in Indonesia is Speedy at 1 Mbps. It cost about $45. This is like using Casio FX to capture man walking or webpage loading and then convert the video to normal fps. Very-very super slow and expensive.
I don't know who the author thinks he's speaking for when he generalises about what the British think of New Zealand, but he certainly isn't speaking for me.
The reason is simple: the telco's down there have to provide broadband for about 10 people, plus a few sheep. It's not hard to make such a small infrastructure.
...it could hardly get any worse for half the ADSL users. I gave up on ADSL when my '2M' link was permanently below 0.5M, sometimes much worse.

While cable modem speeds are much better, the main purveyor of this technology (Telstra Clear) has taken advantage of ADSL's woes to put their prices up.

And with the exception of a few 256k plans, all broadband plans in NZ are capped: once you exceed your cap the ISPs charge like a wounded bull or throttle you to barely-usable speeds.
"Chip & Pin has been here for 2-3yrs now. We have had it in NZ for 15+ years now"

Err.. no! NZ has had PINs on EFTPOS cards for quite some time, but only on the easy-to-copy magnetic stripe on the back of the card. It's only very recently that the chips are being read.

And as for NZ broadband... Hmm... Think of British Telecom in its worst monopolistic 1980s days and you'll get an idea of what it's like here. The govt. is attempting to regulate Telecom NZ into wholesale and retail but has done a pathetic job so far.

Price of broadband here is relatively OK, but most users are hamstrung by low data caps and in some cases low speeds.
This article is right, NZ broadband is pretty bad, but nowhere near as bad as the UK. The prices are comparable, but the militant use of traffic shaping, the shockingly poor customer service, and the need to get that annoying mac code BEFORE you change provider has given me many headaches over the last two years. Boo to crappy UK ISPs...
I've been using cable internet in Canada since 1999 and it's always been fast. I am on a 7mb maximum connection and I stream BBC iplayer (high quality version) content without a hitch every time. It does not please my friends in the UK much since they are unable to do so for the most part. It pisses them off even more to know that I'm accessing iplayer from here at all.
I dont know how someone can tke this type of conclusions: it all depends... Here in Portugal usualy ADSL is terrible, cause you can get between 0.3 MB and 9 MB, not mutch more and always oscilating a lot.
However, with my cable connection I can get real 16 MB of speed with my 18MB ISP contract
Rubbish, what about the 1gig a month cap most people have down there?