NBN Co's Sky Muster Plus to start at $45 a month wholesale

NBN Co will price its forthcoming Sky Muster Plus satellite service that unmeters some traffic and can burst above 25Mbps at a minimum of $45 a month wholesale.

The network builder finally revealed its pricing [pdf] and plan structures [pdf] for Sky Muster Plus on Friday, ahead of a planned commercial launch in July.

The pricing means that newer plan structures for all NBN access technologies will now start at $45 a month wholesale, helping NBN Co fulfil its desire to raise average revenue per user (ARPU).

Elsewhere, such as in the fixed line network, this has led to retail price hikes for users and the relegation of price-sensitive customers to lesser performing services.

It appears the evolution of Sky Muster to Sky Muster Plus could progress in a similar fashion.

At present, retail prices for regular Sky Muster services start at around $34.95 a month, on the basis of much lower wholesale input costs from NBN Co.

Fixed line plans that came with a performance boost courtesy of bundled bandwidth were the first to carry the $45 minimum wholesale charge in late 2017. 

A new 'fixed wireless plus' product sets the $45 minimum wholesale charge up for the fixed wireless footprint.

Sky Muster Plus means that a portion of satellite services will now also join that group.

In practice, this is likely to further deepen the 'class war' phenomenon iTnews first described in April last year, where customers able to pay more for internet services get a higher standard of service than those who can't.

Breaking down the plans

The $45 a month wholesale basic offering for Sky Muster Plus is being called “50GB+”. It includes 100GB of quota split between peak and off-peak periods, along with some unmetered types of traffic.

NBN Co will then offer a “100GB+” product charged at $85 a month wholesale (containing 200GB of quota, plus unmetered traffic) and a “150GB+” product with 300GB of quota plus unmetered traffic for $120 wholesale a month.

Once the peak or off-peak allowance is used up, speeds are shaped from a burstable 25/5Mbps to 512/256Kbps (peak) or 2048/512Kbps off-peak.

Unmetered traffic is treated according to type.

Browsing text, static images, email or webmail can be done unmetered anytime. Operating system updates for PCs and mobiles are also unmetered, but need to be done outside of 7pm to 11pm to get full speeds.

NBN Co notes that it will not unmeter “audio or video content, peer to peer traffic, traffic via VPN, or cloud file storage or sharing)”.