The latest report from the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission, out on Wednesday and based on tests carried out in November 2019, said all retail service providers had achieved between 84.3% and 86.6% of their advertised speed plans.

The ACCC found that consumers on lower speed plans were more likely to experience faster speeds as a percentage of the maximum for which they had paid.

"Consumers on 12Mbps plans received an average of 90.4% of their connection’s maximum possible speed, while those on 25Mbps plans received 88.7%," the report said.

But high-speed plans continued to disappoint. About 25% of those paying for 50Mbps and 100Mbps plans on fibre-to-the-node did not come anywhere near achieving their plan speeds.

“We are pleased to see that speeds have generally improved, however we need more action from NBN Co and retail service providers so that all consumers can access their full NBN plan speeds,” ACCC chair Rod Sims said.

“This Measuring Broadband Australia data clearly shows that too many consumers with FttN connections are not receiving the speeds they are paying for.”

He said that there would have been an improvement of between 1.4 and 6.2 percentage points for some FttN connections if issues such as those with in-house wiring had been addressed.

“Consumers with underperforming connections are encouraged to get in touch with their RSPs, and ask whether a technician may be able to fix their connection issues,” Sims said.

“Otherwise, they should be able to move to a cheaper plan with top speeds their connection can actually provide.”

The next report, due in May, will also look at how RSPs fare in providing streaming content from Netflix and YouTube.