The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission's (ACCC) has reported on its push to monitor broadband performance.

One industry group has already questioned the ACCC’s methodology and the potential cost of a regulatory scheme, while another has lauded the possibilities of regulating the National Broadband Network (NBN).

“The ACCC believes a broadband performance monitoring and reporting program would promote competition and consumer outcomes by providing transparency over the quality of broadband services,” ACCC Chairman Rod Sims said.

The report was unveiled on Friday.

“As the NBN rollout progresses, providing transparency over the performance of the monopoly network provider will be particularly important as retail service providers (RSPs) will be dependent on NBN Co for the underlying network capability,” he said.

“In this regard, visibility over any network-based performance issues would help identify whether any bottleneck issues in the network are attributable to RSPs or the network provider.

“In addition, it is also important for consumers to have information about how different broadband products perform when choosing the option that’s best for them.”

The pilot program monitored download and upload speeds, latency, video streaming, DNS resolution, web-page load times, VoIP emulation, and packet loss of 90 premises in Melbourne.

A broad range of technologies and providers were tested, including ADSL, NBN-delivered fibre to the premises (FttP), non-NBN FttP, and hybrid fibre-coaxial (HFC) across 12 RSPs.

The ACCC is refusing to reveal the RSPs by name, but says there is a vast discrepancy between the quality provided by each.

The Australian Communications Consumer Action Network (ACCAN) has welcomed the ACCC pilot, saying it could be an important step toward more transparency in the industry.

“The pilot showed variations in services from different providers that will be important to consumers,” said ACCAN CEO Teresa Corbin.

“For example, some offer better peak hour performance. Publication of such information would guide consumer choice and mean people will be in a better position to pick the product which suits them best.”

ACCAN was also excited by the opportunity for the ACCC's broadband monitoring to be used to ensure that NBN's satellite service customers in remote and regional Australia actually receive the quality of broadband promised.

But the Communications Alliance says that without a larger sample size, the effectiveness and reliability of the study is unclear.

The telecommunications industry group also claimed the costs of a constant nationwide monitoring program could be excessive.

These costs, the group says, would be compounded by the NBN’s use of a number of different broadband technologies, as they would all have to be examined separately.

“The growing diversity of access technologies within the NBN multi-technology mix, the need to divide the results by region, and the fact that there are more than 400 broadband service providers in Australia may add up to a very expensive solution - the cost of which will ultimately fall on taxpayers or internet consumers,” CommsAlliance CEO John Stanton said.

“Industry welcomes the opportunity to consult further with the ACCC, but that discussion should encompass the full range of options available to meet the aim of greater transparency around broadband performance.

“We need to ensure that if a monitoring program is introduced, it is cost-effective, produces reliable data, and takes account of the fact that there are factors beyond the control of service providers that can influence the results,” he said.