NBN Co wants to demonstrate its commitment to customers by providing monthly progress reports to make it easier for Australians to track the service and performance being delivered on the network.
Following a spate of complaints to the Telecommunications Industry Ombudsman about network congestion, speed promises and service, the NBN has decided to put its best foot forward and provide reports that document the network’s performance, the quality of the service provided, cooperation with industry partners and the progress of the network rollout.
The reports will include some key information including the number of homes and businesses that can connect to the NBN network, the network congestion levels, the average number of faults and how many installations that have been completed correctly the first time.
It is this transparency the NBN wants to present to Australians to demonstrate its commitment to providing the best possible service to customers.
“We have listened to the community’s feedback and want to assure all Australians that end-user’s customer experience is the number one priority of every employee working at NBN Co,” says NBN Co’s chief customer officer Brad Whitcomb.
“Our team has been working very hard over the course of the last 12 months as the network became available to a critical mass, to help ensure the experience of connecting and using services over the NBN access network is meeting and exceeding end-user’s expectations.
“Significant progress has been made to improve the speeds delivered during peak hours, with internet and phone providers now provisioning more bandwidth on the network than before we announced our new wholesale pricing options.
“This has helped to relieve bandwidth congestion on the network from an average of around four hours to 12 minutes per week and to deliver improved broadband services for millions of Australians.”
The February report shows the number of homes and businesses that are ready to connect as well as the homes and businesses that have already connected and tracks that progress with figures dating back a year ago.
From this we can see 2.1 million new homes and businesses have been added to the rollout with 1.7 million new connections since February 2017.
The percentage of homes and businesses whose equipment was installed correctly the first time increased from 87 per cent to 89 per cent in 12 months while the number of homes which have been connected to the NBN within agreed timeframes has increased by one per cent – 91 per cent in February 2017 to 92 per cent in February 2018.
The biggest improvement has been in the average number of minutes of bandwidth congestion per week per service.
A year ago, we were looking at four hours and 50 minutes of bandwidth congestion and in 2018 that’s come down to just 12 minutes.
The number of homes and businesses that have connected to the 50Mbps plans in the past year has gone from 16 per cent to 25 per cent.
Faults being resolved within an agreed timeframe with phone and Internet providers has also improved by seven per cent in the last 12 months.
