Vodafone Urges NBN Price Cut
Vodafone Hutchison Australia has called on NBN Co to reduce its network access charge, while still meeting the government-mandated commercial rate of return.
Vodafone GM Matthew Lobb said NBN Co should be focused on revenue targets by offering higher speed plans, rather than pure usage levels. “What NBN is trying is achieve is a good average revenue per user (ARPU),” Lobb said. “At the moment their ARPU growth is coming from usage rather than from speed choices.
“If you move it towards the ARPU coming from the subscription rather than the CVC charge, you relax the constraints on speed and usage. The market will sell more of that, which is what consumers want, and you can still achieve the right rate of return.”
The charges for downloading data are hitting telco company margins, Lobb said, adding: “If this isn’t fixed and usage continues to grow, there won’t be margins in the market, or the customer experience will diminish.”