It seems like it’s taken an age, but the Labor government has today released the business plan for the NBN. The big numbers: $24 uniform wholesale price for the minimum 12Mbps download speeds, 10 million homes connected within the next 9.5 years with 1.7 million of them connected by June 2013.
Of course, nobody here cares about the entry level wholesale price – you want to know about the 1000Mbps wholesale price, which is set to be $150 a month. That’s not the retail price that you’ll be paying, but it’s still a fairly decent starting point, and the wholesale price is set to lower over time.
In addition to the wholesale price, there will also be a capacity charge, explained in the press release as:
As well as the access charge there will be a capacity charge for the shared resource between the premises and the point of interconnect. This charge is shared across many end-users on the RSP’s service and will add around $1 for end-users based on average data rates.
In terms of financials, the project will cost $27.5 billion in government equity, there’s an annual revenue forecast at $5.8 billion in FY2021 and $7.6 billion in FY2025, with positive operational earnings from 2018 and a positive net income in 2021. From 2015, NBNCo will be sourcing funds from capital markets.
You can download the NBNCo business plan press release here.