Depending on where you are and what service you use, there’s a good chance you’re about to pay a little more for access to something.
Streaming services are going up, with some of the costs significant. Mobile service faces a similar problem, too, what with Telstra raising prices alongside the two other majors Optus and Vodafone, plus a few other carriers set to increase costs, as well.
It’s a similar situation if you need to buy a new computer or phone, with price increases there, though for a different reason, as the cost of AI bites everything else.
While hardware prices are going up because of a shortage of technology, service providers are raising prices somewhere between reasons of the Consumer Price Index (CPI) and simply because they can. And that could spell similar issues for anyone paying for broadband access in Australia.
NBN Co has announced that it will be making changes to its wholesale broadband prices from July 1 onwards, with pretty much every plan except the least expensive plan seeing a few dollars of difference, something Australia’s broadband wholesaler attributes to the annual change in CPI.
From a wholesale perspective, those price differences are only a few dollars, the biggest of which will be an increase of $2.34 for the up to 100/20Mbps plan on NBN Fixed Wireless, with the same change on 50/20Mbps plans on all other fixed types of service, including Fibre to the Premises (FTTP), Fibre to the Curb (FTTC), Fibre to the Building (FTTB), Fibre to the Node (FTTN), and Hybrid Fibre Coaxial (HFC).
All other price changes range between $1 and $2.32, going across 25Mbps at the lowest and 1000Mbps at the highest.
The problem is that while these price changes don’t seem all the much, it’s possible internet service providers (ISP) will increase the price even further.
The wholesale price changes are simply NBN’s changes, price rises ISPs are unlikely to swallow whole. Instead, you might want to expect your internet provider to adjust its pricing in line with CPI alongside, add a few bucks here and there for broadband access around the same time.
That could mean a price change of a few dollars, or it could be a little more, as well, prompting Australians to look around, and check out the assortment of options that suits their needs best. A good example of this could be the wholesale price of the 1000Mbps NBN plan, which will be closer to $76 when the price increase hits, but already costs around $109 monthly at the lowest for carriers, and may cost more.
“As more Australians embrace the faster speeds, increased resilience and improved customer experience of NBN fibre, we continue to upgrade the NBN network to meet the growing demand of our nation’s critical digital infrastructure,” said Anna Perrin, Chief Customer Officer for NBN.
“We understand that price changes can raise questions for customers, which is why we encourage people to review their options and check they’re on the plan that best suits their needs and budget,” she said.
