Earlier today, it was revealed that the company building Australia’s National Broadband Network is exploring making the fastest consumer NBN plan a business-only offering, and developing a new plan for residential customers.
Dubbed as a “repositioning”, the new plan would see the 100/40Mbps NBN Premium speed tier restricted to business customers, with a new 110/20Mbps plan destined for consumers.
From one perspective, this approach has some merit – residential customers would prioritise faster download speeds ahead of upload speeds, as relatively few would need sustained upload speeds of 40 Mbps.
However, 20Mbps uploads are not especially quick. For customers who may back up their photos offline, who may record a lot of video, or who work remotely and require reasonable bandwidth in both directions, 40Mbps would be significantly more suitable than a 20Mbps product that would – in the real world – likely average slower still.
As IT News reported this morning, NBN Co’s general manager commercial Ken Walliss suggested that the extra uplink speed was underutilised.
“We’ve identified that residential customers tend not to use the 40Mbps upload speed on the current 100/40, so to provision a service of these dimensions adds costs from a wholesale and retail point of view,” he told iTnews.
When iTnews sought comment from NBN Co, it appeared to walk back from the proposed plan changes, suggesting it would be up to retail service providers to decide what products make up their offering.
However, if – as it appears would be the case – there’s changes to pricing for the plans, it would cost RSPs more to offer 100/40Mbps plans to residential customers, and that means those customers are going to be asked to pay more.
As a fairly “typical user”, who uploads photos, videos and more daily, and works remotely on occasion, there’s an argument each way about whether I really “need” 40Mbps upload speeds, but there’s another way to look at that question, too.
At the moment, I don’t have 40Mbps upload speeds, and I can think of a few activities I would be carrying out if I did – more working remotely, knowing that my home connection could handle voice and video streams. A 110/20Mbps product likely wouldn’t handle this nearly as well.
What do you think of the current NBN technology mix, and would you prefer a 100/40 plan or a 110/20 plan? Would you expect to pay more or less for the new 110/20 plans?
The entire NBN Co is a sick joke – thanks Labor. When Telstra were the ones laying the ground for other ISPs they may have been pricey, but at least they knew what they were doing and provided infrastructure that performed. I had 100Mb cable and used to routinely hot speeds of 100-115 Mbps on Speedtest. I’ve had 100Mb NBN now for a couppe of years and my Speedtest results primarily h9ver between 60-80 Mbps, and I think Ive only seen it report over 90Mbps once or twice since I’ve had it. Cable not only had higher download speeds, it… Read more »
Kinda funny , on my old phone about three years ago I was getting iirc 40 mb down and 30 mb upload.
Remember when they where saying our new internet NBN was going to sooooo much faster than what we already had 😀,
Yet here we are today and it is barely faster what we had ,
It cost Australians how many billions of dollars , and now they want to slow it down further .
NBN is an utter joke .
But we are not laughing..
Perhaps where the biggest gains were made with the NBN is in regional and remote areas. I live in a small regional town and received FTTN two months ago. I have gone from 4Mb/s to 48Mb/s (12x speed improvement) on my download speed and 0.8Mb/s to 18Mb/s on my upload speed (22.5x speed improvement). NBN has been and is fantastic!
Whats just painful about this is it is so easy for them to implement this as an OPTIONAL soft change to the service that customers could choose within the ISP portals. Much like most ISP allowed you to adjust your ADSL synch rate if you were having drop outs. That way “regular” home users who don’t need or want 40Mbps upload can adjust the service to the 110/20 plan, those of us who have a need to faster upload can have 100/40. In the backend this is all just a matter of rate limiting/policing on the service itself – and… Read more »
The challenge is that Labor established NBNCo as a monopoly to replace Telstra’s monopoly. There is zero incentive for NBNCo to offer these services as customers have only have one option.
Matthew, why are you spruiking in fervent favour of what Telstra has been able to get away with in aiding and abetting the Liebrals in their damage to the Real NBN and infliction of the NFN on the nation?
I agree the NBN is a steaming pile of dog pop. However, as a an existing loyal Telstra NBN customer on an existing $99 unlimited plan they offered me the Premium speed boost for 100/40 for free on my existing plan (normally $30pm). They did try and get me to switch to a new no lock in contract for $90 a month plus the $30 pm month for Premium speed boost but I stuck to my guns and reaped the rewards. Not a bad hack for Telstra customers over Chat
Firstly your headline is misleading. 100 down to 110 is it ? Yes I know the upload change they are proposing (just getting feedback) from 40 to 20 is slowing down but really, uploading photos ? The point is not a sudden burst of upload but the ongoing utilisation of the upload bandwidth. Oh and as to working from home, you won’t get 40mb anyway, you will tend to max out at 30 and from experience working in an office with 20 others on a 40MB synchronise connection we got by easily so one person working from home on a… Read more »
NBN is a piece of shit.
This is what happens when you build a network with speed tiers are overly optimistic as to take-up of faster speeds. ACCC NBN Wholesale Market Indicators reports states only 10% are connecting at 100Mbps making it a premium service for the privileged.
The biggest factual error in this article is claiming 100Mbps is the fastest speed. AussieBroadband will sell a 250Mbps service and there are a hand full of 1Gbps services.
Hi Matthew Who are the providers for GBPS? Thanks Vic
Launtel
You need to move to Launceston for Launtel. MyRepublic offered 100 customers in Wolllongong a 1Gbps service, but that was a once off.
The smarter option is Adelaide which has a 10Gbps service available.
https://www.cityofadelaide.com.au/business/ten-gigabit-adelaide/
I have 3 nest cams and I upload my server backups daily. If they dropped me to 20mbps upload that would cause issues. I would probably have to drop my best cams to 720p.
I wish nbn would get it in their thick skulls that we want faster internet.
Then pay for a business connection. Simple really. You have an option if this change comes in.
I lived in Thailand for two years and had fibre internet in my home, unlimited data with 100/60 and ran solid on cable connection consistantly. Why can Thailand offer better internet solutions than Australia? Cost cutting on cheat product components and poor design?
NBN is a global joke!!!
Now that is correct. The issue here isn’t that they want to drop the download speeds, it is why they want to. It comes back to a shit design screwed up by the LNP and CVC costs too high to make it viable.
Labor priced CVC at $20/Mbps. The LNP cut CVC pricing to $8/Mbps and bundled CVC with 50Mbps plans resulting in most (all?) RSPs upgrading people’s speeds to 50Mbps.
Labor designed the NBN with speed tiers and an expectation that close to 50% would connect on FTTP at 12Mbps. The limited take-up of 100Mbps and faster plans on FTTP enabled LNP to justify FTTN & HFC build. Most Australians don’t care because they aren’t buying 100Mbps and faster speeds.
If they kill 100/40, they kill the only thing that made NBN of value. Heck I get an ultra stable 115/5 on Bigpond cable.
What made the original NBN have value was 1Gbps speeds. What eliminated the value was speed tiers coupled with Labor’s expectation that <1% would have 1Gbps in 2026.
Demand for speeds of 100Mbps and faster has been consistently below 10% once the effect of the early adopter rush in the first two years was removed. Look at the ACCC Wholesale Market Indicators report and NBNCo Corporate Reports if you don't believe me.
That’s because there’s a massive portion of the NBN that can’t get 100/40 at all. I’m on FTTN and max I can get is 63/39. I’d sign up for 100/40 in a heartbeat – but the NBN won’t support that speed.
Sadly Steve if you look at the data your wishful thinking doesn’t match reality. The ACCC figures show that there isn’t a significant difference between FTTN, FTTB, FTTP & HFC in the number of people ordering 100Mbps and faster plans.
The problem is that forums like this are full of people who care about technology. It is the other 90% who are price sensitive and hence ordering slower speeds.
And yet the issue is the cvc cost is way too high forcing the prices up. They say people don’t want 100Mb connections, they absolutely do it is just that the price does not match the product.
I have a 100mb connection because I always said it is what we should all have and I stuck by that mind you I pay $70 a month for it at the moment and get on average 98mb down and 35mb up so I am happy and extremely lucky.
I’m 5 houses from the node and I’m incapable of getting 100/40.
It normally connected around 80/30 but had a habit of going substantially lower. It even ended up at 3/0.3.
Would people be happier with uncapped speeds and data quotas?
i really don’t understand why this wasn’t the method used, that way everyone gets the full benefit of the nbn speed increase but they could also tier it so people who don’t use much can get very cheap plans and people who want unlimited pay the full price, only downside is it would really show up the postcode lottery that we are now inflicted with.
That’s what I have on Optus wireless broadband and that works fine.
Less. NBN is way over-priced as it is.
I have no possible chance of either because the Node is 850 metres away from my house. I therefore have shit internet with no prospect in the immediate future of not having shit internet. If I could get anything approaching 50mbps I would love it but I can’t and most likely never will while I am alive. Thank you Malcolm. Fuck you Tony. I can’t even think of what to say to Mitch.
Me too, David. We max out at 34 Mbps. The type of NBN connection will be a factor in my next house purchase.
The NBN should be a small factor in the purchase of an average house. Technology change will almost certainly cost less than stamp duty, less than replacing the kitchen, etc.
I am similarly a long way away from the Node on FTTN and were getting around 30mbps. I had read somewhere that FTTN is very flakey with old phone lines or bad wiring or having split phone lines into multiple outlets. I took the punt on getting a new phone line run in the house from the outside connection to where my router connects and new wall plate connection. Was a great decision in the end. Night and day difference. I was on a 100mbit plan at the time and started maxing out at 83mbps as soon as we reconnected… Read more »
that is redicoulus. i got the 100/40 because i have 5 people on my net. and now days everything is internet based. i pay 100 bucks a month for it and it doesnt worry me but i dont even get the 100/40. i get 76/36 on average. which im sorta happy but not. so if they go 110/20. what i will get 86/16 thats bloody stupid. nbn need to get it together and think of all costumers not just a few. and stop trying to wiggle out of the stuff ups.
I would say shop around. I went with a heavy advertiser on their 100/40 plan and rec’d similar average (76/28ish). However, on swapping to an Ozzie based provider, I am a LOT closer to my 100/40 (mid 90s/36ish). FTTP helps as well.
Why they like to make decision for the customers?
Although I don’t use 40Mbps up all the time. but when I backup my photos, upload things to cloud, I do need that capacity in place.
I’m with Spirit Telecom and very lucky to have FTTB and 200Mbps linespeed ethernet to the apartment. Their plans are synchronous and we’re currently paying $55 a month for around 55Mbs in both directions. Even if you don’t own a business, but especially if you have kids, people are using more cloud services these days and having a fast speed going both ways is crucial in my opinion.
Meanwhile, in Fixed Wireless land, 100Mpbs doesn’t exist, and congestion of a night often brings downloads down to 5Mpbs or lower.
Yet again the Liebral’s Notional Fraudband Notwork is being further damaged to screw Australians over. One of the ideas for making use of the Real FTTP NBN was tele-medicine. Without real high speed upload, that can never even manage the possibility of of a chance, of it becoming reality in Australia. Remote access for devices on the IoT relies on high speed up and download. This change will prevent the IoT from being usefully available to Australians. Being able to work reliably from home demands fast upstream. This change prevents that, and would only serve to line the pockets of… Read more »
I would need 100/40 due to running security cameras and to view remotely would decrease to upload speed that I’d need to run them in 3 homes as it is we don’t even get the 40 upload speeds some of us get from 100/40 mbps down to 80/25mbps anyway so by nbn reducing the 40 upload that we now get 25mbps in some areas what the hell are we going to end up with the same as we had before nbn but pay even more. We are been screwed again. Iam really sick of this shit my daughter is in… Read more »
Fuck me, If I could get sppeds above ADSL2 I’d be angry about this… I’m less than 900mtrs from the node and still struggle to get above 22mbps.
how about you FIX THE FUCKING NETWORK before you decide “we dont need” faster speeds.
wankers.
This would only be an applicable if my connection was capable of getting 100 down, hey it can’t even get 20 up