Customers of NBN competitors will cop a new $7.30 'broadband tax' every month
The consumer watchdog has decided customers that receive superfast fibre broadband sourced from outside the NBN will be slugged a tax to help coverage in regional Australia.
The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission on Friday handed down its final decision on the government’s proposed Regional Broadband Scheme, which proposes slugging operators of non-NBN superfast networks to pay a levy to go towards NBN’s obligation to service regional areas that are not financially viable.
The commission, in a change from its draft stance, has decided to allow the non-NBN operators to pass on the levy to end customers.
“Our view is that the regulated prices based on the NBN prices may not have allowed these network providers to recover their reasonable costs if they were also required to absorb the proposed RBS charge,” said ACCC chairperson Rod Sims.
The most common scenarios for superfast broadband supplied by a non-NBN player are new housing estates and inner city apartment complexes. The government has long been worried that those suppliers cherry-pick profitable city clientele, while the NBN is left with covering unprofitable rural areas.
The ACCC stated the major operators in the non-NBN space are Telstra (with its South Brisbane and Velocity Estates fibre networks), TPG (with its Sydney and Melbourne fibre-to-the-basement to apartment complexes), Vocus, LBN Co, Opticomm and OPENetworks.
Smaller broadband providers that are supplying less than 12,000 customers will be exempt from the rules as the extra charge would pose “an unreasonable burden” with “little benefit to customers”.
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