This new pricing offers a potential 27 per cent decrease in price on a 50 Mbps product, and a 10 per cent discount on 100 Mbps - but will be offered concurrently with the existing NBN products. But the NBN Co will not force retailers to pass along these savings to consumers, and industry sources say given margins are already thin for some retailers the full saving might not be passed along. NBN Co chief executive Bill Morrow said the changes were introduced to help more people to experience fast broadband. “Combining access and bandwidth charges into one simple price point will not only promote the take-up of plans based on higher wholesale speed tiers and position the NBN 50 bundle as our flagship service, but it will also trigger the triple benefit of improved end user experiences, provide more affordable pricing options for retailers and support NBN Co’s revenues in the longer term,” Mr Morrow said. NBN chief executive Bill Morrow has criticised retailers for not buying enough bandwidth.

This is the first time the NBN has offered an alternative to its two-part pricing model, where access and bandwidth were bought separately. Retailers not buying enough bandwidth to handle busy use on the network has been one of Mr Morrow’s main criticisms of the telcos. The new product will require retailers to buy twice the amount of the average bandwidth than the current 1.1 Mbps under the new plans. Industry sources have described this as "quality control" for the retailers. For 50 Mbps wholesale bundles, 2 MBps are included, at $45, which increases to 2.5 Mbps for 100 Mbps at $65. Additional bandwidth, which could provide retailers a way to stand out to consumers in the market, could be purchased at $8 a megabit per second per month – 40 per cent less than before.

Retailers will also have the choice about how much of the price savings, if any, they pass on to consumers and whether to offer the new plans. Loading An immediate wholesale discount is also available for the majority of NBN users from December 14 until the new plans are introduced. A new voice-only low usage plan would also be offered, with 50kbps of data – enough to cover basic telephony service at $22 a month wholesale. Vodafone general manager of fixed broadband Matthew Lobb said the company was reviewing its NBN broadband plans, but expected it to lead to lower prices in the faster speed tiers.

“By bundling AVC and some CVC, the pricing restructure removes a lot of the risk for retailers around the faster speed tiers,” Mr Lobb said. Nicholas Demos managing director of MyRepublic Australia, a start up retailer with 98 per cent of its 60,000 customers on 100 Mbps, said he’d been prepared for the NBN to “hero” the 50 product. But given the level of discount on the 50 tier product, compared to the 100, he said it was “effectively asking me to look at lowering my customers’ speeds”. A Telstra spokesman also welcomed the announcement, saying it would continue to monitor traffic and adjust CVCs to meet demand. "While we believe these changes will be a positive step when introduced next year, there are still a number of factors that impact speeds including in home wiring and CVCs," he said.

An Optus spokeswoman said it would support structural changes to pricing that deliver better value. The final consultation will continue until mid-January, with the changes to be introduced in the second quarter of 2018.