NBN Co has pushed ahead with two changes foreshadowed in the company’s second round of consultation on wholesale prices.
The company later this month expects to detail all the outcomes of the second-round consultation but has confirmed its plans to implement two measures.
One is discounting the fee charged when an NBN service is transferred from one retail service provider (RSP) to another. Currently the network access wholesaler slugs RSPs with a $22.50 charge for transfers, but from 29 November that will be reduced to $5 via a discount.
NBN Co’s service transfer and transfer reversal charges have drawn scrutiny from the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission, which is currently examining the company’s wholesale service standards. The service transfer fees “can represent a cost that incumbents did not face when migrating end-users to the NBN,” an ACCC consultation paper released last month stated.
NBN Co also said that from 6 December it would go ahead with changes to its bundled 25Mbps product. Currently that product costs $45 a month and includes 2Mbps of end user capacity (CVC). NBN Co plans to cut the effective cost of the bundle to $37, while reducing included CVC to 1.25Mbps.
“Originally launched to help RSPs migrate to ‘bundled’ CVCs, a significant number of consultation respondents asked for the 25Mbps bundle discount to be made available as an intermediate option with a different balance of CVC inclusion and cost,” NBN Co’s second-round consultation paper stated.
The change would effectively give an RSP an additional 250Kbps of capacity for the same $45 monthly wholesale price if they choose to provision 2Mbps+ of CVC per service. NBN Co said the changes were expected to help consolidation of services on to the newer bundled wholesale model.
Also as part of its wholesale pricing changes NBN Co at the start of October, significantly revamped its pricing for entry-level 12Mbps services.