Mitch Fifield (Victoria, Liberal Party, Minister for Communications) Share this | Hansard source

NBN's new pricing structure has discounted the cost of capacity and made the 50-megabit speed tier more affordable. This has resulted in a dramatic reduction in network congestion and much greater take-up of the higher speed services. NBN analysis shows that congestion has fallen from an average of more than four hours a week down to less than 15 minutes per week. That means that superfast speeds are available even through the peak evening hours across the network. Since December last year, more than 750,000 NBN users have moved up to the 50-megabit plan or been connected to fast broadband for the first time at that speed tier.

Most major retailers have responded very positively to NBN's pricing changes by passing on the discounts to their customers. As a consequence we've seen a substantial increase in the proportion of users taking up the 50-megabit service. For these NBN users, their internet speeds are around five times as fast as the pre-NBN ADSL network.