The number of residential NBN services declined in Australia for the first time in the December 2022 quarter, by 0.1 per cent – or almost 9,000 – to approximately 8.73 million, the ACCC’s latest NBN Wholesale Market Indicators Report reveals.

The report looks at the wholesale market for NBN services, in which retail service providers purchase access for supply to consumers and businesses.

The top three providers, Telstra, TPG and Optus, collectively experienced a decrease of almost 95,000 services, to 6.8 million. This reduced their market shares slightly to 42.4 per cent, 22.4 per cent and 13.1 per cent respectively.

Vocus and other smaller providers gained approximately 86,000 services, to 1.9 million, making up the remaining 22.1 per cent of the market.

This was a trend throughout 2022, where NBN services acquired by the four largest providers – Telstra, TPG, Optus and Vocus – decreased by over 227,000 services annually while other smaller providers gained almost 363,000 services.

“This shift from the larger providers to smaller ones is helping to enable greater competition within the sector,” ACCC Commissioner Anna Brakey said.

While the 50 Mbps speed tier remains the most popular, accounting for almost 53 per cent of residential services, it decreased by more than 131,000 services (1.4 percentage points) during the quarter.

There was a large increase in the second-most popular 100 Mbps tier, with almost 190,000 new services (2.2 percentage points), making it account for over 13 per cent of all services.

This quarter also saw decreases in the 250 Mbps and 12 Mbps tier services, approximately 54,000 and 28,000 (0.6 and 0.3 percentage points) respectively, to 1.3 per cent and 8.8 per cent of residential NBN services.

There are 19 broadband providers accessing NBN directly at all 121 points of interconnection (POIs), compared to 13 in the December 2021 quarter. The POIs are the physical locations where providers can connect to the NBN.