It’s a huge week for Australia’s national broadband network, as NBN speed upgrades teased and talked about in the last 12 months is officially now live.
As we expected, not every single retail provider (RSP) has updated their sites yet (and some have even said that while they will honor NBN Co’s upgrades, the changes are not rolled out until October), but based on the providers who have Pushed through the updates, we can already see a pretty clear picture of what the new NBN 500 plans can especially offer Australians.
One word: value.
Great speed, low price
When NBN Co first announced this month’s plan upgrade, it said they would not arrive at no extra cost for RSPs. Of course, we hoped that this meant that customers would not be asked to pay something extra, and based on what we have seen so far for the new NBN 500 level, this has largely been the case. The result is a set of NBN plans that now offers up to 500 Mbps download speeds at prices that just a few weeks ago would only get you 100 Mbps. Effectively, it’s a 5x increase for free.
In the table below we have cherry chosen a handful of providers that now offer the NBN 500 plans to give you a good indication of the kind of price you can expect to pay. We have chosen cheap settings such as Spintel and Kogan Internet along with more expensive alternatives from Origin of Origin Energy. Origin is currently the most expensive provider of those we monitor, but we can imagine that it will change when Telstra activates its upgrades.
Over the past 18 months, we had already noticed that the best NBN 100 plans had begun to offer much greater value than their slower NBN 50 colleagues, with the average monthly costs for the faster option, which generally costs users less than AU $ 10 more each month. Now that 100 Mbps plans are transformed into plans offering 5x speed for the same price looks 50 Mbps plans as straight worse value.
To paint a clearer image, we use spintel as an example. Telco still offers an NBN 100 plan (probably for customers on older NBN connection technologies that are not yet able to take advantage of the speed-boosted plans) along with a new NBN 500 plan that has the lowest initial costs for any provider right now at only AU $ 64p/m.
Spintels slower, 100 Mbps plan? It starts at AU $ 68p/m before setting at the same running speed as its new 500 Mbps counterpart to AU $ 86.95p/m. Not only does this mean that you pay less in the first year on the faster level, but in the end you pay the exact same amount that every year every year every year.
What you need to upgrade
Last week we detailed everything you needed to get these brand new high-speed nbn plans. The most important criteria are to have the right connection type. This is either fiber for the premises (FTTP) or hybrid fiber coaxial (HFC). If you have one of these, you can sign up for a new NBN 500 plan right away.
If you do not have any of these connections, it is very likely that you are eligible for NBN CO’s free fiber upgrade, which will get the required equipment installed in your premises. If you are in a qualified area and want faster broadband, we really do not see any reason why you would not benefit. Not only will you be able to experience much faster and more reliable internet speeds at home, but you will also ensure that your home is future -proofed.
You can see our favorite NBN 500 plan settings so far in our dedicated guide, or you can see a mix of NBN 500 and NBN 100 plan prices in the widget below. The price comparison sweat visualizes perfectly, with affordable some of the new plans, compared to the slower options they replace.
