NBN, which recently secured an additional $3 billion of federal funding to upgrade its network, posted a loss of $564 million in the six months to December 31, lower than the $696 million deficit over the same period a year earlier.
Total revenue for the six months was $2.87 billion, up 4% year-on-year.
Crucially, operating expenses decreased by 2%. NBN is believed to have cut IT, maintenance, marketing and insurance costs, as well as raised wholesale broadband prices and reducing its staff to around 4200.
Its latest earnings report comes weeks after Ellie Sweeney took the reins of the company as chief executive officer at the start of December last year.
NBN’s residential average revenue per user rose by $2 to $49 in the six months to December 31 as more consumers opted for faster broadband services and the company increased wholesale prices.
It says that around 8.62 million premises are connected to the NBN network. About 28% of NBN users are now on plans with download speeds of 100 megabits per second or more, and about half of all new orders are on speeds of 100 Mbps or above, up from 45% a year earlier. However, most NBN users remain on slower and cheaper 50 Mbps plans.
NBN is also exploring launching a low Earth orbit satellite service, similar to Elon Musk’s Starlink nearly a decade after it launched its struggling Sky Muster offering.
It plans to shut down its two existing geostationary Sky Muster satellites – which have about 83,000 customers – by 2032. It says that it has received “positive responses” from LEO vendors since releasing its Request for Information (RFI) to LEO satellite providers in mid-2023 and is now “progressing with this confidential process.”
The number of Sky Muster customers decreased by 21,000, almost 20%, in the first quarter of 2024. Sky Muster’s geostationary satellites are generally regarded to be much slower than LEO satellites.
The Australian Competition & Consumer Commission recently issued a report that for the very first time measured the broadband performance of satellite services in Australia. It found that Elon Musk’s Starlink which has around 200,000 Australian consumers outperformed NBN Sky Muster in terms of delivering higher data transmission speeds and lower latency.
The maximum speed for NBN Sky Muster was approximately 111 Mbps for downloads and 22 Mbps for uploads.
In comparison, Starlink connections are capable of far higher speeds, with the report recording peak speeds of approximately 470 Mbps for downloads and 74 Mbps for uploads.
Sweeney has indicated that as is the case with current NBN plans, which are sold through retailers such as Telstra, TPG and Optus, it would wholesale its LEO offering too.
