Aussie households favouring high-speed NBN plans
According to the ACCC’s latest NBN Wholesale Market Indicators Report (December quarter 2021), more and more Aussies are favouring high-speed NBN plans over alternative broadband services.
The report revealed there are nearly 8.6 million residential broadband services currently on the NBN, with 58% using high-speed services of 50 Mbps and an extra 15% on speeds above this.
With most of the ‘Focus on Fast’ promotional discounts now ended, there was a significant 24% drop (108,000 services) in the number of very high-speed services over 100 Mbps in the December 2021 quarter.
Despite this, we see that nearly 50% of the households that purchased very high-speed plans in 2021 have continued using services over 100 Mbps.
“We encourage consumers to trial new services, but it’s important that they think about their internet usage and choose the speed tier that best fits their needs,” said ACCC Commissioner, Anna Brakey.
Smaller internet providers catching up to the big telcos:
As per the report, it appears that Aussie Broadband’s customer base went up by roughly 46,000 in December 2021, bringing its wholesale market share up to 5.6% from 5.1% in September 2021. In the same quarter, Superloop’s share increased to 1.7%.
Interestingly, we saw several of the bigger telco companies' wholesale market shares drop in the December 2021 quarter. Optus went from 14.5% to 14.1%, Telstra from 44.3% to 44.1% and TPG 23.9% to 23.6%. Vocus, however, saw a slight increase, going from 7.2% to 7.3%.
“We are glad to see continued growth from smaller NBN providers. Their presence in the market keeps pressure on the big four of Telstra, TPG, Optus and Vocus to maintain a high quality, competitive service,” said Brakey.
“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.”
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