Telstra has described the profitability of NBN services as “negligible at best”.

Telstra is calling for NBN Co to alter its wholesale pricing to make it better for the providers who sell it.

Telstra says it has 46 per cent of the NBN market excluding satellite, covering 3.2 million NBN connections, but CEO Andy Penn says this customer base is not bringing in enough money.

“NBN wholesale pricing remains the largest negative impact on our fixed business,” he said.

“Without some sort of long-term change leading to improvement in RSP [retail service provider] economics, the risk of retail price increases, reduced customer experience or customers moving onto other networks such as 5G will increase.

“In Telstra’s case the profitability of reselling the NBN is negligible at best – that is not sustainable.”

However, Mr Penn would not say how his rivals manage to appear profitable where Telstra struggles.

“The fundamental problem is that if your wholesale price is two-thirds of the retail price, which essentially it is, that's what makes it incredibly challenging where as a retailer you've got to distribute and market the product, you've got to service it, you've got to manage billing, put in modems, deal with a lot of the complexities of the administration and the management and the service of NBN,” Mr Penn told financial analysts.

“Fundamentally, that's the issue. We will absolutely improve the efficiency and profitability of [reselling NBN], but I'm just saying there's a bigger structural problem there as well.”