The latest TrueNet broadband report showed panellists with rural ADSL took twice as long to load a group of live web pages compared with ADSL panellists in urban areas.
ADSL, VDSL and DSL are the standard broadband services provided over a telephone line from an exchange or a cabinet.
TrueNet broadband performance expert John Butt said the Government's rural broadband initiative (RBI) was slowly reducing the difference by funding upgrades to rural copper services with minimum speed targets of 86% getting 5 megabits per second or better.
''Sharp reductions in speeds during the evening busy hours have a significant effect on rural broadband performance. ADSL, funded by the Government RBI, performed much closer to urban speeds.''
TrueNet used a selection of live New Zealand and Australian internet web pages to measure performance - downloading them the same way as a standard computer. The choice of pages was updated on November 1, adding a new Australian-located page and a new New Zealand web page, Mr Butt said.
Comparing all technologies, Orcon's 100Mb/s fibre remained the fastest overall.
TrueNet now had sufficient Vodafone and Spark panellists to include in the fibre results. Vodafone 100Mb/s (downloading in 2.3 seconds) lagged behind all other fibre products except for Snap (downloading in 2.4 seconds).
Competition had been heating up in the VDSL market with Vodafone back on top, closely followed by Orcon and Snap, Mr Butt said.
Slingshot, Flip, Bigpipe and Orcon were evenly matched and led ADSL as a group, with iiNet taking the longest to load the live pages.
Fibre testing measured the best of Auckland and Wellington downloads in the TrueNet test. Fibre advertised speeds were limited by the supply from some local fibre companies providing 100Mb/s, which could only ever reach about 95Mb/s retail. Some fibre companies were offering connections at 106Mb/s wholesale to overcome that limitation.
Vodafone fibre lagged well below its advertised speed, achieving only 35Mb/s at 9pm.
Snap was ahead of Orcon in November in the 100Mb/s services. The number of fibre service product plans offered was rising, making it difficult to have enough panellists in each plan to compare, he said.
Downstream speeds now included 30Mb/s, 50Mb/s, 100Mb/s and 200Mb/s.
The Orcon and Snap performances were ''quite close''. Spark and Vodafone were achieving ''somewhat less''.
''TrueNet has observed that as ISPs offer ultra-fast broadband fibre services, there are problems at the start-up of fibre services resulting in lower speed performance. These are subsequently sorted out and we observe improving results.''
Vodafone appeared to be a special case, with several panellists experiencing very slow ramp-up, Mr Butt said.
