nbn, the government-owned company delivering Australia’s national broadband network, has announced a new wholesale pricing model for retail service providers, with potential savings for their medium and enterprise business customers.
On 1 October 2017, nbn will introduce a new spend cap on its high bandwidth business products, which enable business-grade applications such as multiline voice, high-definition video conferencing and online backup.
“The spend cap is designed to lower the monthly wholesale cost of nbn’s applicable business-grade products for retail service providers,” nbn’s Executive General Manager, Product, Sales and Marketing for Business Ben Salmon told Dynamic Business. “It is then up to the retailer as to how they package and price the retail product for business customers. We expect that retailers will pass on the reduction of cost to their business customers in order to drive better value broadband for the market.
Salmon said the ‘capped’ wholesale monthly fee will make nbn’s business products more competitive and flexible.
“All retail services providers will have the ability to save up to 70 per cent on wholesale monthly charges with the pricing set to vary based on the amount of bandwidth and contention purchased by providers each month. nbn’s higher wholesale speed tiers are expected to deliver the greatest reduction in overall costs for retail service providers.”
nbn undertook industry consultation ahead of announcing the new spend cap and confirmed it will replace its Business Ethernet (nBE) product, which was scheduled to launch later this year.
The nbn network, which is currently available to more than one in two Australians, is scheduled to be three quarters built by mid-next year and complete by 2020.
