TPG buying highest speed NBN wholesale services

Australia's consumer watchdog has issued its first report on the state of play in the NBN wholesale market, revealing TPG is leading the pack in acquiring the highest speed NBN wholesale services.

The ACCC has decided to publish quarterly reports on the NBN wholesale market, counting the number of access services for state-based geographies, traffic class, each access network technology, speed tiers, and services per access seeker (the likes of TPG, Telstra, Optus etc).

The reports are intended to provide a detailed view of the "size and structure of emerging NBN wholesale access markets" as the NBN rollout grows.

“... providing information on the state of the market will help service providers in the NBN environment make informed planning decisions so that they are better placed to tailor their services and products to what consumers want," ACCC commissioner Cristina Cifuentes said in a statement.

The inaugural report, covering the three months ended March 31, reveals NBN is supplying 941,235 wholesale access services and 1004 Gbps of aggregate network capacity.

TPG is buying the highest speed services on the NBN - 50 Mbps or more - just ahead of Telstra, with Optus coming further behind in third.

The most popular speed tier is 25 Mbps, with 470,871 services in operation, followed by 12 Mbps with 279,544 services in operation, according to the report.

Telstra is buying the bulk of NBN wholesale services on a national basis, followed in order by TPG, Optus and M2.

All the 121 national points of interconnect (PoIs) had an access seeker presence, while at least 115 had three or more access seekers.

Most of the national services in operation across the NBN wholesale access seeker base are based on fibre-to-the-premise technology (761,557), followed by wireless at 100,958, the report found.

Sky Muster wholesale goes live

NBN separately today announced it had started offering wholesale broadband services on its Sky Muster satellite, which launched into orbit last October.

Two speed tiers are on offer to RSPs: 12 Mbps down and 1 Mbps up, or 25 Mbps down and 5 Mbps up.

Satellite RSPs currently include Activ8me, Ant Communications, Clear Networks, Harbour ISP, IPStar, Reach Net, and Sky Mesh.

They will offer services for those covered by the satellite on mainland Australia and Tasmania, as well as Norfolk Island, Christmas Island, Lord Howe Island and Cocos (Keeling) Islands.

NBN said it expected to have 85,000 users on Sky Muster by the end of June next year. It is planning to migrate the 37,000 users on the interim satellite service by May next year.