Here's how TPG stacks up against the fastest broadband providers on the market.
A steady succession of acquisitions and network expansion has seen TPG become one of the leading providers of broadband Internet in Australia. Speed in particular is one of its key selling points, with TPG touting higher-than-average download speeds on many of its NBN plans.
However, Internet speeds are more than a single number. To properly assess an Internet provider's performance, you need to compare data from a variety of different sources. That's exactly what we've done below. Read on to see how fast TPG is compared to other Australian broadband providers.
Typical evening NBN speeds
Thanks to the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (the ACCC) releasing recommendations around how NBN speeds should be advertised, most Australian telcos now clearly state the typical evening speeds customers can expect during the busy hours of 7:00pm to 11:00pm.
This information provides a much better indication of real-world performance than the standard NBN speed tiers. It also allows for a more direct comparison between plans from different NBN providers, making it easier to determine which one is fast enough for you.
Take a look at the chart below to see how TPG's typical evening speeds rank against other NBN providers. We've sorted the rankings to highlight the fastest providers within the Standard Plus speed tier. If you want to compare TPG against even more NBN providers, check out our guide to the fastest peak-hour NBN providers in Australia.
| Provider | Standard Plus tier | Premium tier |
|---|---|---|
| Activ8me | 47.20Mbps | 90.20Mbps |
| 10Mates | 47.00Mbps | 94.00Mbps |
| Foxtel Broadband | 45.30Mbps | N/A |
| Vodafone Broadband | 45.00Mbps | 83.00Mbps |
| Kogan Broadband | 45.00Mbps | 83.00Mbps |
| TPG Broadband | 42.60Mbps | 88.10Mbps |
Netflix speeds
Typical evening speeds are a handy guide for general Internet performance, but they don't provide a whole lot of insight into a broadband provider's quality of service on specific platforms like Netflix. Fortunately, Netflix takes care of this itself through the Netflix ISP Speed Index, a monthly report that tracks the streaming speeds of popular Australian telcos during "prime time".
The chart below shows how TPG's performance stacks up against the other telcos included in the Netflix ISP Speed Index. Just remember that the reported speeds only reflect Netflix performance and may not translate to other online activities or streaming platforms.
Data updated for Jun 2019 from the Netflix ISP Speed Index
| Provider | Average Prime Time Netflix speed |
|---|---|
| Telstra NBN | 4.42Mbps |
| Optus NBN | 4.30Mbps |
| Aussie Broadband | 4.28Mbps |
| iiNet NBN | 4.24Mbps |
| TPG NBN | 4.18Mbps |
| Exetel | 4.06Mbps |
| Telstra non-NBN | 3.94Mbps |
| MyRepublic NBN | 3.84Mbps |
| Optus non-NBN | 3.83Mbps |
| iPrimus | 3.61Mbps |
| Dodo | 3.61Mbps |
| iiNet non-NBN | 3.42Mbps |
| TPG non-NBN | 3.25Mbps |
| MyRepublic non-NBN | 2.94Mbps |
YouTube speeds
Prefer watching YouTube to bingeing on Netflix? No worries. Google provides its own performance analysis of Australian Internet providers for YouTube, aptly named the Google Video Quality Report. Rather than listing average speeds it tracks the proportion of High Definition (HD) YouTube streams a particular provider delivers throughout the day, averaged over a full month to mitigate spurious results.
You can see how reliable TPG's YouTube streams are compared to the top-ranking Aussie telcos below.
Data updated for Jun 2019 from Google's Video Quality Report
| Provider | 24-hour video quality average | Peak-hour video quality average | Overall video quality rating |
|---|---|---|---|
| Foxtel Broadband NBN | 96.38% HD | 97.75% HD | 97.06% HD |
| Telstra NBN | 95.08% HD | 95.25% HD | 95.17% HD |
| TPG | 94.71% HD | 95.00% HD | 94.85% HD |
| Exetel NBN | 94.46% HD | 94.75% HD | 94.60% HD |
| MyRepublic | 94.50% HD | 94.50% HD | 94.50% HD |
| Dodo NBN | 94.83% HD | 93.00% HD | 93.92% HD |
| TPG ADSL | 86.17% HD | 85.50% HD | 85.83% HD |
Steam speeds
The PC games business is almost entirely digital these days, and that's largely due to the popularity of the PC games storefront Steam. Its hundreds of millions of users download an enormous number of games every day, and Steam uses that data to rank the average download speeds of Internet providers from dozens of countries – Australia included.
To see how fast TPG's Steam downloads are compared to the other Internet providers Steam tracks, check out the chart below.
Data updated for Jun 2019 from Steam
| Provider | Average download speed on Steam |
|---|---|
| Aussie Broadband | 35.2Mbps |
| MyRepublic | 29.6Mbps |
| Exetel | 24.7Mbps |
| Telstra | 22.1Mbps |
| Vodafone | 20.2Mbps |
| Optus | 20.1Mbps |
| iiNet | 19.5Mbps |
| TPG | 17.6Mbps |
| iPrimus | 16.7Mbps |
| Dodo | 12.9Mbps |
ACCC broadband performance data
While the ACCC's push for clearer advertising around NBN speeds has made comparing Internet services considerably simpler, it's not the only initiative the consumer advocacy group has undertaken. Every quarter, the ACCC releases a report ranking the broadband performance of the largest Aussie telcos. The report uses data obtained from the ACCC's own speed tests and highlights how close each provider came to hitting its maximum speeds during the busy evening hours of 7:00pm to 11:00pm.
In the chart below, you can see how well TPG performed against the other telcos included in the ACCC report.
Data updated for Jun 2019 from ACCC Broadband Performance Report
| Provider | Percentage of Max. Download Speed (busy hours) |
|---|---|
| TPG | 88.30% |
| Aussie Broadband | 85.90% |
| Exetel | 85.20% |
| Optus | 85.00% |
| iiNet | 84.50% |
| Telstra | 83.50% |
| MyRepublic | 81.90% |
| Dodo | 81.80% |
| iPrimus | 81.80% |
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