We’re pleased to announce our proposed key pricing changes to take effect from 1 July 2019.

 

Uptake of our UFB fibre continues at record levels this week reaching 500,000 connections on the Chorus network! This is a significant milestone for Chorus and something the industry should take great pride in. We are seeing fibre demand far higher than anticipated in the original fibre plan, we have passed 50% penetration of premises available compared to the original build programme target of 20% by 2020.

 

In order to meet this dramatic surge in demand Chorus has had to bring forward its investment in infrastructure, and to generate a return on that investment we will need to rebalance our portfolio pricing in 2019.

 

Reducing the price of the Fibre Max plan

In September we asked for your feedback on our premium speed plans and where you think these should be priced. In general, you told us;

1. You prefer fewer plans
2. You see a place for the Gig in the premium space but not 200/20
3. That the current wholesale price of the gig is restricting demand.

 

We have listened, and are pleased to announce we are launching a programme of price reductions which will see the Fibre Max plan reduced to $60 on 1 July 2019 and $56 on 1 July 2020.

 

Consulting on other plan pricing

On 24 October 2018 we let you know we have agreed updated price caps from July 2019 with Crown Infrastructure Partners (CIP) and asked for your initial feedback on where we price the Fibre 30/10 and 100/20 plans from 1 July 2019.

We are proposing that $42.50 is the appropriate price for the 30/10 and $46 for the 100/20 Fibre plans from 1 July 2019.  We have made this proposal taking into account the anticipated pricing across our wider fibre portfolio, which is summarised below.

 

We propose the following programme of key price changes:

 

Please refer here for a full list of proposed price changes.

 

Our aim is to adopt pricing across our wider fibre portfolio which strikes a balance between:

• generating a fair return on the billions of dollars we have invested in our fibre network and our continued investment to maintain this network to meet ever increasing consumer data demands; and
• encouraging service providers to offer higher speed fibre products, which deliver a better broadband experience for consumers and stimulate the development of next generation services.

The proposed price increase on the 100/20 and 30/10 Fibre plans help us to achieve that balance given the confirmed price reductions for other fibre plans.

 

Consultation Framework

We have summarised the proposed consultation framework we will use to govern our engagement with you here.

We welcome your feedback on the consultation framework itself.  If you have any feedback about the framework, please contact your account lead by 22 November 2018.  If we decide to change the consultation framework as a result of any feedback, we will let you know as soon as we can.

 

Next steps

Given you have received new information from us, we want to reset the consultation timeframe.  The consultation will run for 4 weeks from today as shown below:

* Although we only need to provide 60 working days’ notice of a price change under the Reference Offer, we are aiming to confirm the pricing from 1 July 2019 well in advance of what is contractually required.