Trouble anticipated as NBN Co’s new high speeds come online

Some NBN retailers are anticipating trouble from September when speeds on the highest tier plans increase, fearing it will be hard to market the plans and ensure customers receive the full benefit.

The changes were announced by NBN Co last year amid supposedly “general support” for them.

They will notably see the 100/20Mbps tier – what NBN Co refers to as ‘Home Fast’ – become 500/50Mbps.

Speed boosts are also on offer for customers of the current 250Mbps and up to gigabit speed plans.

But a consultation paper released by the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) yesterday suggests there are lingering concerns with how the revamped broadband products will land.

One of the concerns is “complexity in selling and marketing ‘Home Fast’ products with significantly different speeds on different access technologies.”

From September, the ‘Home Fast’ subscriber base will split: between customers on fibre or HFC that can theoretically receive 500/50Mbps speeds, and those on partial copper-based connections, such as fibre-to-the-node, curb or building, who will still max out at the existing 100/20Mbps.

Yet the marketing name for the tier will remain the same.

A bigger concern for retailers leading into September is the proportion of customers that will actually see upgraded speeds, owing to the customer premises equipment (CPE) they use.

“Many consumers [will] need to upgrade their customer premises equipment (e.g. modems) and in-home setup to receive the new maximum wholesale speeds, however identifying which consumers is difficult because many bring their own modems,” the ACCC wrote of retailers’ concerns.

In response, the ACCC is proposing a refresh of marketing guidance that retailers must abide by when marketing NBN services.

Initially, the ACCC is advising [pdf] retailers to be “conservative” when describing the typical speeds users of the faster plans are likely to experience, as there will be little to no data available to support claims.

This has happened previously with higher-tier NBN plans, in part as a safeguard against falling afoul of the regulator.

Retailers have been fined tens of millions over the years when their marketing claims did not match up to actual experiences on the network. The variability of different NBN access technologies previously contributed to that problem. 

Conservative figures may also be matched with conservative availability claims.

The ACCC is advising that retailers use wording like “services are only available in limited areas”, especially where there may be capacity constraints in the access network.

Perhaps more opaque are the “reasonable steps” that retailers will need to take from September “to inform consumers about selecting and setting up their modem and other customer premises equipment so they can utilise the full speeds of their broadband plan.”

This is easier for modem routers that the retailers supply, but more difficult with BYO modems.

It appears retailers will be able to meet their marketing obligations by pointing users to some sort of self-check mechanism. It’s not clear what this would be, however.

“Where the [retailer] has not provided a modem to the consumer and is not aware of the characteristics of the existing modem that the consumer is using, [it] should inform the end-user that it does not know whether the current modem would support the consumer utilising the full speed of their broadband plan and advise the end-user how they can check whether or not this is the case,” the ACCC revised guidance states.