The stats come from an annual�� ISP survey done by the Department of Statistics. Survey returns are compulsory, but the figures are self-reports by ISPs using their own interpretations of the categories. In most cases, ISPs will report "business users" as users of "business" plans, but other divisions may be used.

The individual ISPs are probably in a better position than anyone else to report proportions of business vs residential usage, but you still need to apply appropriate condiments to the numbers. In many cases, an ISP may not know if a customer is operating as a business or not. As you observe, many connections are used for both residential and business purposes, and I can't imagine any ISP putting any serious research into this for the sake of answering one question on one annual survey.

There are other questions that may also suffer an element of this kind of fuzz. Again, check your sodium intake.

-- don


On 16/10/15 14:39, Stan Rivett wrote:

I hope this isn't too far off topic but it goes to the accuracy of the actual stats.

How does everyone decide on what is and isn't a business connection when completing the survey? I'm guessing its reasonably straight-forward for those of you dealing with UFB / DSL but out here in rural wireless land the line is pretty blurry. These are some fairly substantial businesses being run from family homes.

Cheers

Stan Rivett
------------------
Netspeed
PO Box 5691
Dunedin
------------------

On 16 October 2015 at 11:37, Neil Gardner <Neil.Gardner@spark.co.nz> wrote:
In this case no... they have carried across the 2014 percentages from the 2013 column... It's a basic, basic, basic error that I wouldn���t expect Stats NZ to make.

(All 3 values are wrong in the 2014 percentage column are wrong... they are listed as 67/32/1 and should be 69/29/2)

But I'm sure (apart from the other error I noted) that the rest of the spreadsheet is accurate right? We should all just believe it? Shouldn't we?

Cheers - N

-----Original Message-----
From: Jay Daley [mailto:jay@nzrs.net.nz]
Sent: Friday, 16 October 2015 11:29 a.m.
To: Neil Gardner <Neil.Gardner@spark.co.nz>
Cc: nznog <nznog@list.waikato.ac.nz>
Subject: Re: [nznog] Stats NZ ISP survey


> On 16/10/2015, at 9:57 AM, Neil Gardner <Neil.Gardner@spark.co.nz> wrote:
>
> And 30 seconds in I find a mistake :-)
>
> Table 3, BB connection access technology table...
>
> 2014 to 2015 Fibre Optic connections went from 46000 to 105000
> Or, in the percentage table below... Went from 1 to 5 percent...
>
> The correct numbers (assuming the number of connections are right) are 2.4% to 5.45%

I think they apply the random rounding by 3 to the counts and percentages independently.

Jay

>
> But hey...
>
> Cheers - N
>
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: nznog-bounces@list.waikato.ac.nz [mailto:nznog-bounces@list.waikato.ac.nz] On Behalf Of Jay Daley
> Sent: Friday, 16 October 2015 9:47 a.m.
> To: nznog <nznog@list.waikato.ac.nz>
> Subject: [nznog] Stats NZ ISP survey
>
> Those of you that use the ISP survey from Stats NZ might like to know that the���ve reissued it, silently, following discovery of discrepancies between this release and previous releases for historical data.�� Basically they re-ran the random rounding for historical data and got different random values from before.�� This is now fixed and the latest spreadsheet is consistent with previous ones.
>
> http://www.stats.govt.nz/~/media/Statistics/Browse%20for%20stats/ISPSurvey/HOTP2015/isp15-alltables.xlsx
>
> Jay
>
> --
> Jay Daley
> Chief Executive
> NZRS Ltd
> desk: +64 4 931 6977
> mobile: +64 21 678840
> linkedin: www.linkedin.com/in/jaydaley
>
> _______________________________________________
> NZNOG mailing list
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--
Jay Daley
Chief Executive
NZRS Ltd
desk: +64 4 931 6977
mobile: +64 21 678840
linkedin: www.linkedin.com/in/jaydaley

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