The competition watchdog has issued its list of final prices for high-speed Internet supplied by non-NBN services.
Initial prices for providers except Telstra will be $27.00 per port per month. Additionally, there will be a charge of $8.00 and $17.50 per Mbps per month for aggregation to a point of interconnection.
The aggregation price will vary by retail service provider depending on how much of capacity a RSP purchases per port.
Telstra’s fibre network prices for 2017-18 are $16.03 per port per month (Zone 1) and $21.10 per port per month (Zone 2) and $29.27 per Mbps per month for aggregation.
{loadposition sam08}An RSP will also have to purchase Telstra’s wholesale line rental service, which is an additional $20.69 per month.
The major providers covered are Telstra (South Brisbane and Velocity Estates fibre networks), TPG, Vocus, LBN Co, Opticomm, and OPENetworks.
Smaller non-NBN networks have been allowed to pass on the proposed regional broadband scheme charge on customer lines to help fund NBN Co’s supply of non-commercial regional fixed wireless and satellite services.
“Our view is that the regulated prices based on the NBN prices may not have allowed these network providers to recover their reasonable costs if they were also required to absorb the proposed RBS charge,” ACCC chairman Rod Sims said.
“One of our main aims has been to ensure that internet retailers and their customers supplied via the non-NBN networks will not be worse off than if they were supplied Internet services by the NBN.
“Consistent with our draft decision, the 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 high speed internet sector, which will continue to drive down the average cost of supplying services.
“We expect that these price changes will help deliver better service performance for customers of non-NBN networks as they will allow retailers to provide faster services at a lower average price.”