NBN Takeup Progress

The NBN rollout has progressed well over the last 6 months, with about 1 million premises passed and half a million premises activated.

The package choice made by subscribers hasn't changed, so the mix still has 80% of FTTP subscribers, and 87% of FTTN subscribers, choosing either the 12/1 or 25/5 packages.

There still isn't much demand for the higher speed packages.

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NBN Progress report...

There are now more FTTN/VDSL2 subscribers than there are FTTP subscribers, despite starting less than 2 years ago (and 3 years after FTTP).

Overall takeup just shy of 50%.

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One could argue that poor network performance is why a number of people are opting for 25/5 rather than higher packages. No reason to choose 100/40 if you can barely get 20Mbps at peak time anyway. Hopefully NBN Co and ISPs can work together to improve the capacity and congestion issues that people have been facing so far.

It's a shame that so much of the FTTP rollout has been replaced by FTTN as well. Like FTTC over here, it's going to need rebuilding in a few years with FTTP anyway.

In reply to a post by Toonshorty:

One could argue that poor network performance is why a number of people are opting for 25/5 rather than higher packages. No reason to choose 100/40 if you can barely get 20Mbps at peak time anyway. Hopefully NBN Co and ISPs can work together to improve the capacity and congestion issues that people have been facing so far.

That would indeed be a motivation to go for the lesser packages, though the pattern predates a lot of the congestion reports.

My understanding was that the congestion comes back down to how much backhaul capacity the ISPs are purchasing from NBN, rather than the access network itself. I imagine the market will sort itself out gradually...

In reply to a post by WWWombat:

My understanding was that the congestion comes back down to how much backhaul capacity the ISPs are purchasing from NBN, rather than the access network itself. I imagine the market will sort itself out gradually...

That seems to be the common trend. NBN backhaul isn't expensive, especially when you compare to the likes of BT Wholesale.

Limiting your bandwidth from your customers via NBN is a sure easy way to limit the amount of bandwidth you use via transit. Could there be any correlation between the two given the far higher cost of transit to/from Australia to the rest of the world?

Matt

Duly noted though a very different market to here.

Due to the cost of transit unlimited is at best very expensive and at worst unavailable from providers.

When you only have 100 GB, say, of usage a month at a particular price point there's far less incentive to spend more on higher speeds.