The NBN was meant to supercharge Australia’s internet, but if you pick the wrong plan, the only thing it will supercharge is your wallet. And not in a good way. The point is, not all NBN providers and equal, and the download speeds you get heavily depend on who you sign up with.
An NBN 100 plan on one provider, say Telstra, won’t necessarily be the same speed as an NBN 100 plan on Optus, even though they’re technically the same product. The way NBN providers buy network capacity from NBN Co means there can be quite a bit of variance in peak hour speeds from one provider to another. But thanks to the ACCC, NBN providers are now revealing the NBN speeds you’ll *actually* get if you sign up with them, not just the speed tier you’re connecting on.
To help you find an NBN plan that’s actually fast, all of the time, we’ve done the leg work and put together a list of the fastest NBN 100 and NBN 50 plans based on the evening speeds providers have disclosed.
Before we continue, it’s important to understand the “typical evening speeds” provided by NBN ISPs are just an indication of the speeds you can reasonably expect during peak hours. There’s plenty of other factors that can affect what speeds you’re able to get. These include the technology you’re using to connect to the NBN, the hardware in your home, and abnormally high usage in your area.
NBN 100
The NBN providers with the fastest advertised “typical evening speeds” for their NBN 100 plans are as follows:
- Telstra: Typical evening speed of 90.41Mbps
- Aussie Broadband: Typical evening speed of 90Mbps
- Exetel: Typical evening speed of 83Mbps
- Internode: Typical evening speed of 80.5Mbps
- Optus: Typical evening speed of 80.4Mbps
- TPG: Typical evening speed of 80.2Mbps
- iiNet: Typical evening speed of 78.5Mbps
- amaysim: Typical evening speed of 78.1Mbps
And here’s the pricing you’re looking at for an unlimited NBN 100 plan from one of these providers:
Telstra doesn’t technically sell any NBN 100 plans, hence the separate widget. If you want NBN 100 speeds on Telstra, you’ll need to buy an NBN 50 plan and pay an additional $30 per month for a speed boost.
NBN 50
The NBN providers with the fastest advertised “typical evening speeds” for their NBN 50 plans are as follows:
- iiNet: Typical evening speed of 46Mbps
- TPG: Typical evening speed of 46Mbps
- Dodo: Typical evening speed of 46Mbps
- Optus: Typical evening speed of 45.4Mbps
- Telstra: Typical evening speed of 45.37Mbps
- Aussie Broadband: Typical evening speed of 45Mbps:
- Internode: Typical evening speed of 43.6Mbps
- Exetel: Typical evening speed of 43Mbps
And here’s the pricing you’re looking at for an unlimited NBN 50 plan from one of these providers:
There’s a couple of things worth noting:
There’s a lot more variance in evening speeds across NBN 100 plans compared to NBN 50 plans. When it comes to NBN 50, most major providers are consistently hitting typical evening speeds of around 45Mbps.
Plans with higher evening speeds tend to be pricier on NBN 100 plans, but this isn’t necessarily the case for NBN 50.
Aussie Broadband is the only provider to public CVC capacity graphs for every NBN Point of Internet connection, which means you can get a more accurate idea of what speeds you can expect in your area.
As it stands, Telstra and Aussie Broadband are easily the fastest NBN providers based on typical NBN 100 speeds during peak hours.
