According to Vocus, the new federal government should “reboot” the NBN Special Access Undertaking process. CEO Kevin Russell said that “NBN’s proposed SAU variation is built on the flawed foundations of its history.”

He further added that “the new government, with its commitment to keep the NBN in public hands, has an opportunity to make a clean break from the policy mistakes of the past – and reboot the SAU process to put Australian broadband users first.”

“Put simply, the real market value of the NBN is far less than what it cost to build. Because of this failure to recognise the real market value of the asset, NBN has proposed SAU variations as a monopoly targeting unrealistic financial returns, rather than addressing consumer needs and market reality.”

Still, according to Vocus, a reboot of the SAU process should be combined with a new Statement of Expectations. “With the network build complete and upgrades now underway, this process should look forward, not back,” Russell said. 

“Without a new approach, NBN’s unrealistic financial targets could continue to impact affordability, constrain digital inclusion, and hold back innovation for decades to come,” he further added.

In a submission to the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission, Vocus highlighted that NBN’s proposed pricing includes “initial price hikes” of almost 15%, which was followed by an ongoing annual price increase over 20 years.

Vocus detailed in its submission that “our Dodo customers are traditionally those who require significant data (and therefore consume significant bandwidth) but seek to do so at the lowest available cost. The primary reason behind their choice of product is the retail price. Many of our Dodo customers are not willing to pay more for their NBN service. In 2021, following a $5 increase on our NBN50 plan, we had an increase in our churn rate of 30% compared to the previous six months.”

Vocus further said that there should be segmented pricing. In this case, the prices of lower-end speed tiers should be reduced appropriately compared to the prices of plans under the higher speed tiers. For example, a more reasonable entry-level NBN25 product should have a flat fee of around $30, and a 10x quicker product such as NBN250 might be priced 5x more while a 40x quicker product like NBN1000 might be priced 15x more. Hence, Vocus joins Telstra, Optus, and Commpete as industry stakeholders who want a rejection of the NBN SAU offer.