Proof that Telstra Bigpond is Throttling Youtube Bandwidth in Australia (video)

We've found that telstra throttles all kinds of things on the way into and out of Australia. So much so that a simple openvpn tunnel between our rack there and our rack in NJ (USA) makes just about everything better.

Ouch, I feel for Australians. Even the best numbers there are pretty low, and the lowest ones (Telstra's, it seems) are atrocious.<p>For comparison, here's mine: <a href="http://ss.corecursion.com/myspeed-20100509-142516.png" rel="nofollow">http://ss.corecursion.com/myspeed-20100509-142516.png</a>

Remember, these are averaged numbers.<p>The Australian broadband market is highly segmented according to speed. Until quite recently Telstra Bigpond was offering a 256Kbit connection labelled 'ADSL broadband' with 512Kbit and 1.5Mbit connections priced significantly higher. The idea of an 8Mbit or 20Mbit connection would be almost science fiction to their traditional customer base.<p>Now that FTTH is coming into play in some areas and Bigpond's market share is dropping, higher speeds are becoming more affordable but there are still a lot of people on those lower speed plans. I suspect this is what is skewing the graph labelled 'ISP', more than any selective throttling by the ISP (though I certainly wouldn't put that past them either).<p>The comparison to other ISPs is not entirely fair either because their customers tend to be clustered in areas where the ISPs have their own hardware in Telstra's exchanges and can therefore offer higher speeds and attractive pricing. Elsewhere in the country, Bigpond and lower speeds are both much more prevalent.

This is shocking. Let's hope this gets some media attention.

4.29 Mbps average, in melbourne, significantly higher than all the other rates (including my ISP, iinet). It bursts up to 8 Mbps. It's probably because I'm very close to the exchange (I checked before I moved).<p>FWIW, it has made no impact on my life satisfaction whatsoever. People rave about highspeed internet, esp in Japan; it sounds cool, but the applications aren't there yet (not for me, anyway). I'd appreciate lower latency, though, for games.

Telstra's subsidiary in New Zealand was also at the bottom of all rankings, but this week they installed the Google cache boxes to mask the issue.<p>YouTube now hits 3-5Mbps for me. At start of playback it appears to burst a chunk of video, and as it gets close to needing to buffer, it bursts another chunk.<p>Maybe the Australian parent should look into it, it helps a lot.<p>I can actually watch 720p and higher without having to pause and come back in 10 minutes.

While I don't agree with the tactic, it is actually a very clever way of reducing bandwidth usage by Telstra. Most youtube videos stream fine at 1Mb/s. I'd guess that a lot of youtube clips are closed before they are over and any buffered data is "wasted".

Have you ever met anybody with a more agitating tone in his voice?