Do you run a business in Christchurch or Dunedin that depends on broadband?
Tell us how good the speed of your service is.
New Zealand's broadband speeds are improving, but response times are still lagging in some of our major cities, a report prepared for the Commerce Commission shows.
Tests showed web browsing speeds are good in Auckland, but response times are slower in other areas of the country, due to a lack
of investment in infrastructure.
Loading a webpage in Auckland can be almost four times quicker than in Dunedin, says the report.
The report examined the quality of broadband services provided by ISPs and compared their performance across major cities including Auckland, Hamilton, Wellington, Christchurch and Dunedin.
Cities suffering longest delays
Testing shows delays in loading web pages are greatest in Dunedin - 4.1 seconds to 7 seconds. Delays for the same page in Auckland were 1.8 seconds.
Delays were found to be 2.3 seconds in Hamilton, 2.9 seconds in Wellington and 4.7 seconds in Christchurch.
The decline in speed appears to be caused by some service providers locating key equipment in Auckland.
A need for additional investments in backhaul and core infrastructure outside Auckland continues to be a barrier to improving broadband performance outside of Auckland, the report says.
Such investments were carried out by some service providers, but were not completed in time for the report.
Telecom Retail says it launched new domain name servers in Christchurch and Auckland earlier this year and all new customers in the South Island were receiving their broadband via this server.
Web browsing speeds also varied considerably between service providers.
Overall improvement
However, overall, all cities tested have shown an improvement in web browsing speed since the beginning of last year.
There had also been a more significant improvement in international web browsing speeds, which was attributed to increased use of 'caching' techniques or the local storage of international content.
Internet availability had been good in some months of the reporting period and not as satisfactory in others.
All service providers tested had internet access available to their customers for 99.9 per cent of the time or greater, in at least three out of the six months tested.
Telecommunications commissioner Dr Ross Patterson said the focus of the report was on web browsing speeds because web browsing was the most common activity undertaken by internet users.
Patterson said the commission wanted for the report to show ISPs' performance against their competitors in different locations and identify methods to improve their performance.
Telecom spokesperson Mark Watts said the overall improvement in broadband speeds reflected the hundreds of millions of dollars spent on rolling out fibre to homes.
Telecom's network business Chorus is half-way through its programme of installing fibre to roadside cabinets operating as mini-exchanges aimed at boosting broadband speeds, also referred to as fibre-to-the-node.
That programme is expected to be completed by the end of 2012 and is expected to deliver speeds of 100 megabits per second to 75 per cent of the population.
Poor broadband affects Dunedin media firm
A global video production firm based in Dunedin, Natural History NZ, sends its video over broadband to broadcasters in the United States, Asia and Europe.
But connection speeds were so bad a client just today asked that a video be put on a hard drive and mailed by post than wasting time downloading, said IT manager Wayne Poll.
"It's like trying to run with your legs tied together. It's just ridiculous," Mr Poll said.
"It slows down our growth and we miss out on opportunities."
Speeds had been slowly improving, but at a quarter the rate it should be, he said.
Last night, he tested connection speeds and found that the company's 10 gigabits per second line was only getting 160 kilobits per second - less than one-sixtieth the speed paid for.
It was only three times dial-up speeds, Mr Poll said.
Files that should be transferred in less than three hours took a day and a half, he said.
"And for us it's about an overnight turnaround."
Even though it was costly to stay in Dunedin, Mr Poll said he was a "southern bloke" and was not going anywhere.
