Telstra reveals NBN pricing

Telstra has revealed its retail pricing for the National Broadband Network, with plans starting at $49.95 per month for a 25 Mbps service with 50 GB data quota.

The much-anticipated pricing comes after Telstra signed a final agreement to sell services over the network over the weekend.

Telstra became the 36th service provider to sign the one-year contract, which was required to sign up new customers onto the network after an initial trial agreement expired in January.

Under the final pricing released Monday, Telstra will offer standalone NBN plans at $49.95 for 50 GB, $69.95 for 200 GB and $89.95 for 500 GB of data quota per month with 25 Mbps downstream and 5 Mbps speeds.

The same data quotas at speeds of 100 Mbps and 40 Mbps come at a $10 monthly premium.

Speeds on both plan tiers are slowed to 256 Kbps once a customer reaches their monthly data quota.

The plans do not include a $349 standard installation deal for connection to the network.

The telco also continued to push line rental services at an additional cost of between $22.95 and $89.90 for a traditional home phone service and extra features.

It would be offered over copper in areas where Telstra retained its network and as "Digital Voice Service" in areas where copper is not available.

Telstra said it would waive the installation fee if customers chose a bundle of home phone, NBN and T-Box or T-Hub services.

The standalone plans differ significantly from the most recent plans offered to eligible customers in its own Velocity fibre-to-the-home greenfields, which come at a $20 monthly premium over comparative services on its cable network.

Last hurdles

The pricing and contract signing comes as Telstra last week cleared one of the last major hurdles to its $9 billion deal with NBN Co. It lodged a revised undertaking with the competition watchdog late last week to structurally separate over the course of the NBN rollout.

The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission is reportedly expected to approve the revised undertaking, which effectively accepts the recent decision to set regulated pricing for wholesale DSL services, within days.

The agreement will see Telstra progressively migrate broadband customers off its copper and cable networks, and decommission the copper.

The deal had seen several delays, with the parties missing a December 20 deadline last year.

Though Telstra has already signed up more than 500 trial customers in the five mainland NBN sites, it has yet to charge them for the service.