Great Barrier Island Broadband Survey
Part 1
Two weeks ago I placed an ad in the Barrier Bulletin asking people to give us the results of a test on their broadband, then things went wrong, people were unable to load the page because the internet was to slow, Sparks broadband speed test decided to fail, etc…. but 24 people replied with 32 entries. And, although that isn’t enough people or entries to make any definite observations, I though I would give you a run down of the results so far. On multiple entries by the same person I have taken the best result, because I’m an optimist……I have discounted one entry as I believe that person is also an optimist.
RBI Wireless came out in front with the highest score of 11.3Mbps download speed with results from 5 people. However, one of those entries was 0.49Mbit/sec which brought down the average speed with RBI Wireless to 7.17Mbps.
Next in line was ADSL with a high score of 5.9Mbits/sec download speed with results from 16 people. The lowest was 0.1Mbps with the average download speed for ADSL being 1.69Mbps.
Satellite came third with entries from two people with the highest being 3.97Mbps and the lowest being 0.4Mbps.
What does this mean? Well, nothing really. There aren’t enough entries yet to come to any conclusions apart from please keep filling in the form. And not just when your internet is bad, if you are having a good day then fill it in then as well. The wild variability of the broadband speeds on the Island is one of the problems that needs to be addressed.
As a final consideration think of this. The highest speed recorded so far in the survey is 11.3Mbps. That is less than half the average speed in New Zealand and with that average speed being forecast to reach 75Mbps by the end of the year. It is also more of a ratio than when we moved from 56kbps dial-up to 256kbps broadband, back in the day…..
Thank you to everyone who entered their broadband speed. Please keep on doing so, the more data we get the more information we have.
Part 2
So, we have some preliminary results. Not nearly enough people have done the test yet and some have tried but said,”The Internet was to slow” which is terrible. To make things worse I have heard that the Port Jackson Tower was being worked on and that threw the network out a bit as well.
Still, things aren’t looking good. Out of 29 entries 15 are below 1Mbit. The highest is 11.3Mbit with Vodafone as the provider and that is from the RBI Wireless connections. Already the survey has pointed out a couple of areas that appear to have problems, let’s just say you wouldn’t want to live on Blackwell Drive, but we really need more data. And now, considering the Port Jackson maintenance may have affected things, it might be a good idea to see if you can beat your old score (for better or worse) in a couple of days.
No northerners yet either. If your Internet is too slow then keep on trying folks. If you can’t load a single page then I don’t know what you are paying for.
Preliminary Results
