Where is my NBN?
As NBN slowly rolls out around the city of Melbourne and the country at large, there are still plenty of people asking the question, ‘Where is my NBN?’
In certain areas there are alternatives to the NBN and the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) has announced its draft decision on pricing for these services. This will affect pricing for access to super-fast broadband services (SBAS), local bitstream access services (LBAS), and Telstra fibre access broadband (FAB) services during the National Broadband Network (NBN) rollout.
The ACCC said the new pricing is designed to ensure retail service providers (RSPs) and consumers do not pay more for access to these NBN-like services than they would for NBN services itself.
“The draft prices have been set in line with NBN prices, and will change with NBN prices over time. Prices will reflect the growth in traffic across the super-fast broadband sector, which will continue to drive down the average cost of wholesale aggregation services,” ACCC Chairman Rod Sims said on Monday.
This is good news for consumers as they wait for access to the NBN. The ACCC decided in July last year to regulate wholesale SBAS access for the next five years, which will fully cover the proposed three-year roll out period. While many of us are resigned to the fact that we may be waiting a long while, at least we won’t be paying more for internet that is almost as fast as, but not NBN speed internet.
The breakdown for the speeds are as follows –
- The pricing will see SBAS and LBAS services charged at AU$27 initially per port per month for speeds of 25/5Mbps, with subsequent pricing to be the price of the NBN’s AVC TC-4 25/5Mbps product price as amended in future. The initial aggregation charge per 1Mbps per month will be AU$15.25, and will then be subsequently amended as per the pricing for the NBN’s connectivity virtual circuit (CVC) TC-4 product.
- Telstra FAB services, meanwhile, will be priced according to their zones, and will be updated each year.
If you have any questions about what internet maybe suitable for your business while you wait for NBN, feel free to get in touch. We are always happy to help.
