Optus latest to reveal fibre service pricing

Optus has become the latest carrier to reveal its NBN service pricing, with bundled services starting as low as $AU39.99.

The carrier has broken with the rest of the industry in terms of plan structure: rather than offering tiered prices by speed, Optus has decided to focus on download allowance as the basis of its offers.

If a customer bundles its NBN service with a mobile, the entry-level price provides 40 GB per month, with the top bundle price of $AU79.99 giving the customer 500 GB. When bundled with the home phone, customers can get up to 1000 GB per month for $AU129.

Speed is then stipulated separately: the customer can stick with the 12 Mbps or 25 Mbps provided free with their data packs (depending on which service they select), or spend up to $AU20 per month (for the 100 Mbps service) to switch on higher speeds.

Announcing the NBN price book, Optus also announced its first customer for NBN aggregation services. Retailer iSeek Communications is trialling the Optus aggregation service, which allows smaller service providers to access NBN services as a wholesale bundle that includes services such as backhaul which would otherwise have to be acquired separately.

The aggregation service also allows the retailer to reduce the number of NBN Points of Presence (POIs) it connects to. With 121 POIs to be built under the network (due to a regulatory intervention by the ACCC earlier this year), the cost of establishing a national footprint has been criticized as being prohibitive for smaller ISPs. ®