More of Australia’s broadband subscribers are receiving higher-speed National Broadband Network (NBN) services, according to the most recent data published by the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC). In the latest ‘Wholesale Market Indicators Report’, the regulator confirmed that more than a quarter of customers connecting via the NBN were signed up to a plan offering downlink speeds of 50Mbps at end-March 2018, up from less than 5% just three months earlier. Commenting on this marked improvement, ACCC chairman Rod Sims noted: ‘Nearly one million customers are now using a plan with 50Mbps speeds. This is a remarkable shift in just three months.’ The increased uptake for the faster speeds has been attributed to NBN Co’s ‘Focus on 50’ promotion, launched in December 2017, which offers a temporary credit to retailers for acquiring 50% more Connectivity Virtual Circuit (CVC) per user and reducing the price of the Access Virtual Circuit (AVC) for 50Mbps services.
Meanwhile, according to the latest data, by the end of March 2018 all 121 points of interconnection (POIs) had at least five access seeker groups acquiring services directly from NBN Co, while at least six groups were connected at 120 of the POIs, and 95 POIs had at least seven groups acquiring services. In terms of the most-used access technologies, at end-March 2018 fibre-to-the-node (FTTN) connections numbered 1.742 million, with fibre-to-the-premises (FTTP) and HFC services being provided to 1.240 million and 417,193 users, respectively. In total, NBNCo was supplying a total of 3.814 million wholesale broadband access services at the end of the reporting period, up from 3.467 million at end-2017.