Veritech Corporation

The National Broadband Network has launched a new pricing model for service providers amid outrage of slow internet speeds in regional communities.

The change comes as retail providers failed to purchase enough bandwidth capacity from NBN Co. to support people on their network.

“A new pricing model will reduce the price of connectivity charges from the previous $15/1Mbps to a lower cost for retail service providers,” an NBN spokeswoman said.

“Retailers can reduce the cost of CVC down to below $10/1Mbps, provided they buy sufficient amount of connection.”

Veritech IT guru Livio Mazzon doesn’t see a problem with the price change, but thinks the NBN is a “catch 22” scenario.

“The whole reason for the government putting NBN in, having the infrastructure, is that you get more efficiency,” he said,

“The economy is of scale because you’ve got one organisation looking after all the infrastructure and you get consistency.

“But then we’ve kind of gone back to where we started when we had a monopoly provider in the first place.”

The cost of the super fast internet project has created a deadlock between the the government, NBN Co. and service providers.

More than $49 billion was borrowed in construction costs from the federal government, resulting in high charges to telcos to pay pay back the debt.

“The problem is for the smaller telcos, (the pricing) makes it very hard for them to compete in the marketplace,” Mr Mazzon said.

Wagga residents should ask retailers what average speeds are available at peak times, an NBN spokeswoman said.

Article and photo courtesy of The Daily Advertiser