The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) has found that almost 8.6 million residential broadband services are now signed onto the NBN with 58 per cent on high-speed services of 50 Mbps and 15 per cent on speeds of more than 50 Mbps.
ACCC Commissioner, Anna Brakey said the NBN Wholesale Market Indicators Report found that as the majority of the Focus on Fast promotional discounts ended, the number of very high-speed services of more than 100 Mbps fell by about 108,000 services, or 24 per cent.
Ms Brakey said however, almost half of the households that took up very high-speed plans in 2021 remained on services above 100 Mbps.
She said consumers should trial new services, “but it’s important that they think about their internet usage and choose the speed tier that best fits their needs”.
“We are glad to see continued growth from smaller NBN providers,” Ms Brakey said.
“Their presence in the market keeps pressure on the big four of Telstra, TPG, Optus and Vocus to maintain a high-quality, competitive service,” she said.
“Some smaller providers are offering consumers different options to meet their specific needs, such as tailored plans and discounted pricing options, network performance graphs, Australia-only call centres and gamer-optimised plans.”
The Commissioner said NBN providers acquired slightly less Connectivity Virtual Circuit (CVC) capacity over the December quarter and average capacity acquired per user decreased from 2.82 Mbps in the September 2021 quarter to 2.73 Mbps.
CVC is effectively the bandwidth that NBN providers acquire from NBN Co.
“NSW, Victoria and the ACT experienced large CVC declines, while the other States and Territories increased, which suggests lockdown restrictions easing in the Eastern States influenced the overall CVC reduction in the quarter,” Ms Brakey said.
The ACCC’s full December 2021 Report can be downloaded in Excel at this PS News link.
