NBN Tassie: Special pricing for early adopters

James Riley
Tuesday, 25 May 2010 17:46

IT Policy - Government Tech Policy

The NBN Company will charge internet service providers a one-off fee of $300 for each connection to its wholesale fibre network in Tasmania, with no monthly access charges due until the middle of next year.

NBN Co chief executive Mike Quigley told a Senate estimates hearing Canberra that the one-off wholesale access charge per customer was not directly related to cost, and was intended to encourage retail service providers to participate in the first stage of the Tasmania roll-out.

The $300 one-off charge is limited only to premises in the Midway Point-Scottdale-Smithton phase one of the NBN Tasmania roll-out. The three ISPs signed up to phase one - iiNet, iPrimus and Internode - are all eligible for the special pricing.

Quigley told the senators that offering special pricing to early retail customers - effectively the connection fee only - was not unusual and that he would not hesitate to make the same offer in a commercial organisation.

With no on-going monthly fee, it is clearly hoped the arrangements will help drive take up in this embryonic stage of the NBN roll-out.

Mr Quigley said the first services were on schedule to be offered phase one of NBN Tasmania from July of this year, and the special offer lasts until July 2011, when it will move to the national pricing model that NBN Co undertakes with the ACCC.

He said the NBN Co would make its pricing submission to the ACCC in the next few months.

Meanwhile, Communications Minister Stephen Conroy says Government has no intention of releasing the NBN Co's formal business plan, and that it was "absurd" for Opposition senators to think it ever would.