Vocus and Aussie Broadband gained almost 62,000 services in the June 2023 quarter, while the total number of residential broadband services on the NBN remained steady, the ACCC’s latest NBN Wholesale Market Indicators Report has found.
Vocus grew by over 33,000 services in the quarter, taking its market share to 7.9 per cent. There was similar growth for Aussie Broadband, which gained over 28,000 services to now have 7.5 per cent market share. For other smaller broadband providers, the growth was spread most notably across Superloop, which now has 3.1 per cent market share and Southern Phone with 1.4 per cent.
“The sustained growth of smaller broadband providers shows that there is continued demand from consumers for innovative and competitive services,” ACCC Commissioner Anna Brakey said.
Telstra and TPG’s services declined by almost 76,000 in total during the June quarter, and they now have 41.5 per cent and 21.7 per cent of the market, respectively. Optus’ market share remained steady at 13.1 per cent.
The 50 Mbps speed tier remains the most popular with 44.2 per cent of the market, despite dropping by approximately 650,000 services this quarter. This decline was counterbalanced by an increase in the number of wholesale services for both the 25 Mbps and 100 Mbps speed tiers. This change in speed tiers was driven by the expiry of short-term wholesale discounts to the 50 Mbps tier and broadband providers seeking out more cost-effective ways to deliver their services.
The report also found that almost 55,000 premises were upgraded to higher capacity fibre to the premises services in the June quarter. Satellite services continued to decrease, with a decline of about 4,500 services or by 4.8 per cent this quarter.
The average bandwidth that NBN supplied to wholesale access seekers increased to 3.12 Mbps per user in the June quarter, up from 3.01 Mbps in March 2023 and compared to 2.84 Mbps per user in June 2022.
"Retailers are acquiring more network capacity per service from NBN Co in order to meet consumer demand during the busy hours of 7 to 11pm," Ms Brakey said.
Further information, including time series data, is available on the ACCC website at NBN Wholesale Market Indicators Report.
Background
The ACCC’s NBN Wholesale Market Indicators Report contains information on NBN Co’s provision of wholesale services to retail service providers. It does not report on the services supplied by retail service providers to end users.
Retail service information is available via the ACCC’s Internet Activity record keeping rule report.
Retail service providers use NBN Co’s wholesale access service to supply retail services to their own customers or to supply a wholesale service to another (usually smaller) retail service provider.
Most small retail service providers do not directly connect with NBN Co, instead they resell the services they buy from larger providers such as Telstra, TPG and Optus.