The latest Australian Competition and Consumer Commission's (ACCC) report on the telecommunications sector for 2014-2015 revealed stable prices while data consumption increased 40 percent on fixed networks and 35 percent on mobile networks.
ACCC chairman Rod Sims said: "Consistent with the trend in recent years, consumer demand for data is continuing to increase and is affecting both fixed and mobile networks. On fixed networks, data consumption grew by 40 percent to 1.3 million terabytes (TB) of data. On mobile networks, data consumption increased by 35 percent to 110,000 TB."
Sims said the increase was due to the popularity of audio-visual streaming services such as Netflix, Presto and Stan.
The report revealed a 0.5 percent decrease in overall prices. At the same time, service providers increased data allowances by over 70 percent for DSL internet services and more than doubled for post-paid mobile services, according to ACCC.
“While a smaller reduction than in the previous eight years, which has seen a 3.3 percent fall each year on average, this indicates that competition on factors other than price has been a feature of the market,” said Sims.
ACCC stated that will make sure "consumers receive accurate information about network performance".
The consumer watchdog pointed out that the market is relatively concentrated and it will keep an eye on it following TPG's acquisition of iiNet and NBN's co-acquisition of Optus hybrid fibre coaxial networks last year.
"The rollout of the NBN is one of the most significant features of the telecommunications market with nearly 700,000 active services in 2014-15. The scale and complexity of the multi-technology mix NBN and its implications for competition and consumers continues to be a major area of ACCC interest," stated ACCC.
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