More telcos connecting to NBN at more locations, ACCC finds

ACCC releases latest NBN wholesale market snapshot

The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) says that its latest report based on wholesale market data provided by NBN Co shows positive signs for competition.

As of the end of June, there were at least seven telcos purchasing capacity from NBN Co at 117 Points of Interconnect (POIs) — the previous report revealed that there were seven or more telcos at only 95 POIs.

The POIs are the 121 locations — mostly Telstra exchanges — where traffic is handed off from NBN Co’s access network to telcos.

At the remaining four POIs there are six telcos, the ACCC report reveals. Five providers — Aussie Broadband, Optus, Telstra, TPG and Vocus — purchased capacity at all 121 POIs.

The ACCC said that Vodafone and MyRepublic are at 91 and 99 of the POIs, respectively, and the latter plans to connect to all NBN POIs in the near future.

The location with the highest number of access seekers (17) is the Eastern Creek POI — the single point of interconnect for NBN satellite services.

The three fixed-line POIs with the highest number of telcos purchasing bandwidth are located in Civic in the ACT, Launceston in Tasmania and Wollongong in New South Wales

Despite more telcos offering services at more locations, Telstra has maintained its dominance, the report reveals, with the company responsible for more than half of the 4.04 million fixed line and fixed wireless NBN services in operation as of 30 June.

The ACCC figures are based on wholesale figures, however, so the figures from telcos such as Telstra that sell services to smaller providers don’t accurately reflect the strength of their retail arms.

After Telstra, TPG had the next strongest presence in the NBN market with close to 893,000 services, followed by Optus (561,000), Vocus (361,000), Aussie Broadband (51,000), and MyRepublic (26,000).

The ACCC’s report also reveals that NBN Co’s efforts to push 50Mbps services as the baseline NBN product continue to bear fruit, with 1.46 million households on the speed tier.

Around 400,000 end users were on 100Mbps or faster services, while 1.11 million had 25Mbps and 1.16 million 12Mbps services.

“A more than nine-fold increase in 50Mbps services so far this year shows that higher speed plans can be delivered if the incentives are right," ACCC chairperson Rod Sims said. "We are pleased to see retailers responding to their customers’ needs."

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Tags broadbandNetworkingnbn coTelecommunicationsNational Broadband Network (NBN)Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC)

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