Telstra is looking to launch its own 5G fixed-wireless home broadband product to directly compete against the federal government’s National Broadband Network company, NBN Co, at a time when it, along with its other peer competitors are arguing over the high wholesale prices NBN Co are currently charging.
The launch of Telstra’s own “5G Home Internet” product, sets the scene for the company to keep more money in its pocket whilst bypassing the NBN altogether and the high wholesale prices it is charging.
According to a report in the Sydney Morning Herald (SMH), Telstra is looking to launch its 5G Home Internet package this Wednesday and will apparently be priced at $85 a month and will offer 500GB of data to eligible customers. Telstra have stated to the SMH that it expects customers to achieve typical download speeds between 50Mbps and 300Mbps, which is certainly a bit faster at times than my current HFC connection I currently have with Telstra.
Michele Garra, the head of Telstra’s Connected Home and Business unit has told the Sydney Morning Herald that the 5G Home Internet service can offer a possible viable alternative to many homes struggling with current poor NBN connections.
“We will be targeting customers that are having the poorest experience today, those that are being constrained by the technology (used to deliver broadband) whether its legacy ADSL or the NBN, and that, We are also looking at customers that have the highest need to come through our service channels, those having a lot of faults and outages.”
Given its current competitor, Optus, has currently has a 5G fixed-wireless service and is planning to launch two new high-speed plans, priced at $75 a month and $90 a month respectively, later this year, though no data limits were provided.
It also comes at a time when the Federal Government last week announced that through the NBN Co, it will invest in rolling fibre out in Fibre to the Node areas covering some two million households over the next few years, whilst the NBN Co is predicting a much smaller uptake of faster, fibre broadband services.
Furthermore, Telstra has to also tread very carefully with the launch of any new competitive NBN product, as the company because of a non-compete agreement signed between Telstra and NBN Co. Under these terms of the agreement, Telstra would lose the one-off payments that it receives from NBN Co for customers moving from their current existing connections with Telstra to the NBN if it decides to go toe-to-toe against the NBN.
Ms Garra has said that while the 5G service will be highly targeted, the footprint of the service can be expanded quickly.
“Over the next 12 months, we’ll be scaling up so more people can get in on the action, especially as 5G continues to evolve and when millimetre wave [mmWave] spectrum is available.”
With the announcement due tomorrow, we will await to see more details, so watch this space.
