Sky Muster Plus satellite data allowances boosted for rural and regional users

Satellite data allowances are being boosted for NBN customers in rural and regional Australia.

Preparations ahead of the launch of Sky Muster II in French Guiana in 2016.

Satellite data allowances are being boosted for NBN customers in rural and regional Australia in the wake of the coronavirus catastrophe.

Sky Muster Plus unmetered services will be expanded to cover all online content and applications, with only two exclusions – video streaming and VPN traffic – which will continue to be metered. NBN says this will be available on an ongoing basis from April 1.

Additionally, households with lower data needs can access a new 25GB entry plan with 25GB of peak data and 25GB of off-peak data, with an option of ‘top up’ data, should customers exhaust their monthly metered data allowance. This will be available in coming months.

NBN resellers will be allowed to customise data allowances on retail plans in 5GB increments, and include top up data in plans.

Satellite broadband retailers will get temporary access to an additional 45 Gigabytes of download data for each standard NBN Sky Muster service from 31 March, for up to three months.

NBN is increasing the average wholesale download limits to 90GB, depending on the services that resellers order from NBN. “This offer is an effort to support the anticipated higher volumes of traffic as people work from home and conduct schooling remotely,” it says.

Communications minister Paul Fletcher said the government anticipated higher than usual internet usage across the NBN, including in regional and remote areas.

“Under the new Sky Muster Plus offering, approximately 70 per cent of all data use is expected to be unmetered compared to about 30 per cent under the current plans, with the product also supporting unmetered usage for education applications and apps such as Skype and FaceTime for the first time.”

Last week NBN expanded the ability of internet retailers to service customers with an additional 40 per cent capacity boost at no extra cost.

An NBN spokesperson yesterday said the general NBN ­network was operating as normal and had not experienced any congestion issues.

The spokesperson said NBN was closely monitoring the network and would work with ­internet providers to address any potential demand surges as quickly as possible. Daytime traffic was tracking about 50 per cent lower than the peak load on the network during the Saturday evening busy hour.

“The network has a well-paced augmentation plan to keep ahead of growth in data demand, and as a result the NBN continues to perform well.”