nbn co is launching three new wholesale higher speed tiers, following research data revealing increasing demand from customers for higher speed residential broadband services.
nbn co research showed that 23 per cent of its customers surveyed across Australia had upgraded to higher speed internet plans within the last 12 months, and a further 24 per cent of customers surveyed indicated they were planning to upgrade to higher speed home internet connections within the next 12 months.
With most Australians spending more time at home, nbn co also recorded a strong demand for higher speed services from its new customers, with around 80 per cent of customers connecting to the NBN network for the first time choosing retail broadband plans based on wholesale download speeds of up to either 50 or 100Mbps.
Brad Whitcomb, nbn co Chief Customer Officer – Residential, said, “This period of self-isolation has given pause for many Australians to consider how important it is to choose the right plan to meet their needs and, generally, the more people and the more devices connected within the home, the more utility and benefit customers are able to derive from higher speed plans over the NBN network.”
To further improve residential customers’ NBN experience, nbn co is overprovisioning the downlink component of the Home Fast and Home Superfast products by around 10-15 per cent, where possible (with the exception of the new Home Ultrafast speed tiers).
nbn co is planning to overprovision most other existing wholesale fixed line speed tiers starting from between June and August 2020 (with the exception of the new Home Ultrafast speed tiers).
The provision of additional download capacity at the wholesale layer is designed to accommodate protocol overhead, which includes the code used to help ensure the correct delivery of data packets, that otherwise impact a user’s broadband speed.
The intention is that more broadband users can experience download speeds that are closer to the maximum theoretical download speed of their chosen retail speed tier, subject to factors such as the capacity of the internet retailer’s network and the efficiency and throughput of their in-home wiring, router and Wi-Fi equipment.
nbn co’s three new residential wholesale products include: Home Fast, Home Superfast and Home Ultrafast, which have each been developed by nbn co following detailed consultation with internet retailers.
NBN Home Fast is designed to offer peak wholesale download speeds of up to 100Mbps and upload speeds of up to 20Mbps and is available across all fixed line NBN technologies.
NBN Home Superfast will offer peak wholesale download speeds of up to 250Mbps and upload speeds of up to 25Mbps. NBN Home Superfast is currently available to approximately 32 per cent of premises that are ready to connect to the NBN.
NBNHome Ultrafast will offer peak wholesale download speeds of 500 to close to 1000Mbps (subject to the access technology by which the service is supplied) and upload speeds of up to 50Mbps. NBN Home Ultrafast is currently available to approximately 18 per cent of premises that are ready to connect to the NBN.
“Our priority is to help deliver high speed broadband to premises across Australia and, as we complete the initial volume build to 11.5 million premises, we are starting to unleash higher speed tiers on a phased basis,” Mr Whitcomb said.
“Launching the three new higher wholesale speed tiers is the next step in our network evolution and we will continue to upgrade the network to offer higher speed services to more customers over time.”
nbn co said it will support internet retailers to verify the actual speeds that are attainable at individual premises.
