Days after taking to YouTube with an ad marking the halfway point of the national broadband network rollout, and not long after we cheekily pointed out the speedtest result in the ad, NBN Co has pulled their own ad.
Earlier this week we noted that the ad had a closeup shot of what most Australians would consider a rather unspectacular speedtest result: a ping of 598ms, and a fairly unspectacular download/upload speed to match. There was an explanation: the customer was serviced by the Sky Muster satellite service, and the ping and download speeds are fairly standard for that service.
[referenced url=”https://www.kotaku.com.au/2017/07/whos-keen-for-600-ping-on-the-nbn/” thumb=”https://www.kotaku.com.au/wp-content/uploads/sites/3/2017/07/oh-dear-nbn-410×231.jpg” title=”Who’s Keen For 598 Ping On The NBN” excerpt=”Earlier today, NBN Co proudly announced that the rollout of the National Broadband Network was halfway complete, with 5.7 million homes and businesses connected. But not everyone is excited to have the NBN connected – and its new promo did an unfortunate job of showcasing why.”]
But the vast majority of Australian households aren’t, and won’t, get their internet through satellite. They’ll get it from a hardline connection, or some form of wireless (fixed or mobile). And for those people, seeing NBN show off nearly 600 ping and download speeds comparable to ADSL2+ isn’t something to be proud about. A lot of people already get that, if not better, now, and were angry that the NBN was so proud about their achievement.
So that explains in part why people were annoyed by the NBN’s latest ad. And perhaps because of that, NBN Co has pulled the ad from YouTube. I’ve reached out to the company for an explanation as to why the ad – which had comments disabled from the outset – is no longer online.
Here’s the uploads for the nbn Australia YouTube account:
And the latest NBN Co ad is, well, substantially different.
If NBN Co gets back to us with an explanation as to what happened, we’ll let you know.
Update (7:59 PM) : After 5:00PM this evening, this reappeared on the nbn Australia YouTube account:
Still wondering why it was taken down in the first place.
Comments
15 responses to “NBN Pulled Their Own Ad From YouTube [Update]”
LOL so NBN Co couldn’t even market itself competently…
It might have something to do with the concentrated effort to downvote the video and report it as a misleading/ a scam.
At least I hope it has a little to do with it
somewhere, there’s a marketing manager yelling at a creative agency like it was their fault
good story alex…. !!! what a laff NBN
edit: is that the “gamer package” ?
This isnt the first time their adverts have completely missed rhe point / target… their appears to be no market testing or peer review.
Not to mention that it would be near impossible to present the current state of affairs in a positive light.
I also hope that their marketing depart are hold overs from the original NBNco and are putting this stuff out there as a low key protest.
Knowing the usual marketing teams, there was probably no-one on the market testing panel who knows what a ping is, much less how to distinguish between a high one and a low one, because it was aimed at promoting the NBN to the demographic that hasn’t taken the NBN up yet, which is primarily NOT anyone with a tech-oriented background.
More sad than funny…
pretty ironic really. Maybe they were trying to set the bar pretty(very) low?
“NBN – Lower Your Expectations”
“NBN – Connecting People… Eventually”
Cue sad laughter.
Interesting that most of the people I know with NBN (in fact all of them) – and quite a few of them play Rocket League with me on PS4 with connections of less than 12 – do nothing but RAVE about the awesome quality of their internet with NBN
Yet, you jump on Kotaku and its like a whole ‘nother world
Gonna be mentioning the download speed as X/X which is download mbps / upload mbps.
It totally depends. In places where the network is done properly and if you get the highest package of 100/40 then yes it is great.
But if you go NBN and pick the lower plan which is 10/1 or 25/5. It must be understood that ADSL2+ is already 20/8 at the most ideal speed, which is on par with the medium speed with NBN.
So no getting NBN is not a good thing. If you can afford the top speed yes it is great but if not you get no gain and possible a loss in terms of your speed.
Are they on the FTTP rollout? It’s the Fibre to the Node (FTTN) part (40% of Australia) that has had most of the issues (people paying for 100Mbps but their copper only being able to deliver ~35, etc), and is about as good as its going to ever get without being replaced.
The copper is so variable, that there is a minority of people close to the node and in newer estates that have an OK experience (70-80ish Mbps), but for the average Australian it’s pretty crap.
Add to that NBN Co’s ridiculous pricing model that makes the fast plans way too expensive (compared to every other country) and incentivises the RSPs to skimp on bandwidth, leading to big peak congestion, and you get the kind of responses you’re seeing here.
nbn. the only national infrastructure that can be crippled by p!s$ing on a node. (oh wait, i forgot about t3l-mol3sta/aka telstra + metrotrains, or any other government department for that matter…).
My NBN connection has been gradually getting better, at first it had lots of congestion and a few line cut offs. Now its pretty decent, however it is only connecting at 92/37, but that’s ok, this will deteriorate in the years to come as the copper continuously degrades however. Shame we didn’t go with the cheaper option that is fiber optic (if you think otherwise then your thick).
Customers IP address in the bottom left corner of the speed test has been edited out in the new video