Summary

  • The ACCC’s count of residential TC4 services in the 100Mbps group fell from 2.11 million in June 2025 to 786,856 three months later. The group above 100Mbps rose from 695,370 to 2.40 million.
  • NBN Co had launched a wholesale product change on 14 September 2025: Home Fast moved from 100/20Mbps to 500/50Mbps on eligible FTTP and HFC connections. The product change landed in the quarter the rate groups moved, giving the chart a commercial plot twist.

For years the 100Mbps line was a tidy shorthand for a faster Australian broadband plan. Then the wholesale supplier changed the plan and left the chart to do the paperwork.

The ACCC’s June-quarter 2026 NBN Wholesale Market Indicators report counts residential Traffic Class 4 (TC4) access services by download data rate. Between June and September 2025, the number in the 100Mbps group plunged from 2,107,457 to 786,856. The group above 100Mbps jumped from 695,370 to 2,403,744. Over the same quarter, the total TC4 base barely moved: 8.80 million to 8.80 million.

That is a remarkable quarter for a market that did not suddenly acquire two million new broadband lines. The categories moved far more than the market did.

The date matters. NBN Co said its accelerated residential wholesale tiers would be available from 14 September 2025. Its announcement changed Home Fast from 100/20Mbps to 500/50Mbps, Home Superfast from 250/25Mbps to 750/50Mbps, and introduced a 2,000Mbps Home Hyperfast product. The changes applied to eligible fibre-to-the-premises (FTTP) and hybrid fibre-coaxial (HFC) connections. Retail providers decided when to offer the faster products to customers; customers on an affected tier were to receive the higher wholesale speed when their provider made it available.

The chart’s 100Mbps population fell by 1.32 million in that quarter. Its above-100 group gained 1.71 million. The figures are not a one-for-one ledger, and the ACCC’s public table contains no service-level crosswalk linking old and new product records. But the timing gives the apparent migration a commercial mechanism: a product once counted at 100Mbps could now sit above that line because the underlying wholesale offer had changed.

By June 2026, the >100Mbps group had reached 3,406,059 services, about 38.6% of the 8,817,314 TC4 total. The 100Mbps group stood at 686,680, or 7.8%. The 50Mbps group fell from 3,486,284 in June 2025 to 2,356,027 a year later.

The ACCC counts wholesale TC4 services by reported download-rate group. Household Wi-Fi results, retail bills and address-level eligibility sit in separate records.

A precise reading is more useful: Australia’s wholesale broadband ladder was redesigned, and the mix of services in the ACCC’s rate buckets shifted with it. “A sudden consumer stampede” assigns a motive the table never records; “a bookkeeping quirk” erases the real product change. Product design helps determine what the market’s most repeated speed statistic appears to measure.

A published bridge would make this shift auditable: how many services moved when the wholesale tier changed, when each retailer opened the faster offer, and how much growth came from new orders. Then the next chart could show both the product story and the customer story.