Over two-and-a-half million Australian families, individuals and businesses are now going online through the National Broadband Network, the competition watchdog says.
NBN Co is currently providing 2,511,392 wholesale internet connections all over Australia, an increase of 440,269 or 21 per cent since the March quarter, latest figures from the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission show.
The ACCC's sixth quarterly breakdown of wholesale access services acquired over the NBN, suggests a major increase of smaller providers connecting directly with NBN Co.
ACCC Chairman Rod Sims said a growing number of smaller internet service providers (ISPs) are using the NBN to supply retail services to their own customers, resulting in increased competition and better consumer outcomes.
"This improves service levels for end-users and increases the competitiveness of the market," he said.
After a further five ISPs bought in to the NBN since the last report in March, Mr Sims said there are now over 20 ISPs directly connected to NBN Co's network compared with 14 when the first report was produced in 2015.
The report has also found the average connectivity virtual circuit (CVC) capacity acquired for each user rose by 10 per cent over the quarter.
The total CVC capacity acquired by ISPs increased to 2,820 gigabits per second, up 36 per cent from the 2,149Gbps of the last quarter.
Under the current structure, an ISP's solution for congested internet is to buy more megabits of bandwidth per second - attracting a CVC fee, for each serving area they cover.
The CVC Mbps costs scale up as customers use faster connections of up to 100Mbps download speeds.
"CVC is an important component of how retailers provide enough capacity to deliver the speed of services they have sold to their customers," Mr Sims said.
The ACCC is currently consulting with industry about improving transparency around CVC reporting by NBN Co.
