How many people will pay these prices?

Andrew Bolt Blog

Thursday, July 21, 2011 at 05:30pm

 

Are these the kind of prices you thought you’d get, after handing over $36 billion to build the NBN?

Promises from the government that consumers will be able to access the NBN for comparable prices to current day plans are “untenable in practice”, internet provider Internode says.

Internode today became the first ISP to reveal retail prices for internet and phone services delivered via the national broadband network. Prices range from $60 to $190 a month.

Customers will have to buy a bundled package that includes both home phone and internet access and the cheapest plan at the slowest speed will be $59.95 for a 12 megabits per second (12 Mbps) connection and 30GB of downloads....

In a blog post accompanying the new prices, Internode chief executive Simon Hackett criticised the competition regulator and NBN Co. ..

“The National Broadband Network (NBN) is the subject of promises from the government that consumers will pay comparable prices to current day ADSL2+ and phone service bundles in order to access entry level NBN based services, and that NBN based retail pricing will be nationally uniform,” said Hackett.

“Unfortunately, a number of pressure points in the wholesale pricing model exist which will make these promises (from the government) untenable in practice....”

Hackett has published a detailed analysis going into the technical specifics about why the government’s pricing expectations are unreasonable…

However, Teresa Corbin, chief executive of the Australian Communications Consumer Action Network (ACCAN), said the prices released by Internode were comparable to today’s prices. But people who want higher speeds would have to pay more to get them.

How many people will pay these prices? Herald Sun Andrew Bolt   Blog#86767#86767#86767