CANBERRA, July 24 (Xinhua) -- Australia's major telecommunications providers on Monday admitted that they are unable to guarantee advertised speedy internet to customers under the government-owned National Broadband Network (NBN) scheme.
The news follows last week's announcement from the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) that it would be cracking down on misleading Telcos which try to advertise NBN packages by their "up to" download speeds.
The ACCC said it was aware that some of the major providers were advertising speeds of "up to" 100 megabits per second, when speeds were actually averaging less than 10mbps.
On Monday, a spokesperson from the nation's biggest provider, Telstra, told News Corp that while it advertised zippy speeds under its NBN programs, those speeds were "not guaranteed."
"Speeds on the NBN vary due to quite a large number of factors," the spokesperson said.
"Some of these factors are managed by retail service providers like Telstra, others are designed and controlled by (the internet wholesaler) NBN Co."
A spokesperson from fellow telco Optus said while the speed "tiers" advertised show the maximum speeds available, those speeds were a guide only.
"Speed tiers indicate the maximum upload and download speed that a service is provisioned at," the spokesperson said.
"The speed in each tier is not indicative of the speed that customers will experience at all times."
But while the Telcos have shifted some of the responsibility to NBN Co, IT expert Jaime Ruggier said it was the Telcos who were to blame, explaining that they were not purchasing enough bandwidth from the NBN Co to deal with demand during peak Internet-browsing hours.
"The problems is that the Telcos just can't keep up in congested times," he said.
