Aussie Broadband gets transparent about NBN congestion

NBN provider Aussie Broadband has taken the unprecedented step of publishing its network traffic levels across all 121 NBN points of interconnect (POIs), as part of its "congestion-free network" promise. 

A POI is essentially where the NBN connects to the wider internet. There's 121 of these around Australia, and NBN resellers can choose to sell NBN connections on as a few or as a many POIs as they like. Providers need to purchase network bandwidth - the Connectivity Virtual Circuit - for each POI. Depending on the number of customers a provider has in in each area, the amount of CVC they purchase can and will vary from POI to POI.

CVC is the amount of network capacity shared between an ISP's customers. CVC is typically blamed as the leading cause of congestion on the NBN, because its pricing makes it impossible for ISPs to buy enough to guarantee every single customer the speeds they're paying for at peaks times.

To make a service affordable, telcos have to find the right balance between how much they charge and the amount of CVC they buy. Purchase too little, and your customers will have a terrible experience during peak times. Purchase too much, and you won't make money selling your plan or keep it priced competitively. Unsurprisingly, telcos have typically kept this information private. 

Aussie Broadband is the first NBN ISP to publicly reveal the amount of CVC it has purchased for each POI around Australia. Selecting a POI on the Aussie website will reveal a graph that details the amount of capacity it has in that area, as well as the usage in the past 24 hours. For example, selecting St Leonards shows that there's approximately 500Mbps of bandwidth available to Aussie subscribers in the area, and around 450Mbps of it was used during peak hours last night. (If you don’t know which POI you're on, Aussie has a tool to check.)

The telco says that it constantly monitors the graphs, and that it upgrades capacity if usage starts to approach the limit.

If you were looking for a new NBN plan and were considering Aussie, you could use these graphs to check the telco's performance in your area.

"It's really part of our 'no bullshit' approach to things," said Aussie Broadband managing director Phillip Britt. "We’ve been providing CVC graphs for a while to answer individual queries about levels of traffic management; this just makes the whole process public, visible and ongoing."

"Anyone with concerns about congestion in their area can immediately take a look at the traffic on their Point of Interconnect for the past 24 hours and see whether there were any issues with the Aussie network."

We're all for this level of transparency, and are hoping it leads to other telcos following suit.

The news follows a recently monthly progress report from NBN Co, claiming that the average NBN subscriber now experiences just 12 minutes of congestion in a week. This is down from 4 hours and 50 minutes, one year ago. The figure is however an average across all subscribers and all providers (who each purchase their own amount of bandwidth), so individual results may vary.

Compare Aussie Broadband NBN plans here.

Alex Choros

Managing Editor + Group Telco Editor | X | Instagram | Threads | LinkedIn

Alex Choros is the Managing Editor of WhistleOut Australia and an award-winning journalist. He's been writing about consumer technology for over a decade and is an expert on the Australian telco sector, to the point where he knows far too many phone and internet plans by heart. In addition to leading the WhistleOut editorial team, Alex is responsible for ruining the office Sonos with his troubled taste in music.

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