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Faster internet, anyone? Photo: Shutterstock<\/p>\n
Millions of Australian homes and businesses are enjoying significantly faster speeds after NBN Co this week made good on a promise it made 18 months ago, turbocharging users with fast fibre to the premises (FTTP) and hybrid fibre coax (HFC) services \u2013 for free.<\/p>\n
The boost \u2013 which NBN Co has called \u2018Accelerate Great<\/a>\u2019 \u2013 comes as Australians connect more devices in home and workplaces, increasing overall demand by 8 times over the past decade as streaming channels, video calls, cloud services, and online gaming took off.<\/p>\n The average Australian NBN user downloaded 508GB of data in June, up 10 per cent compared with 460GB a year earlier.<\/p>\n \u201cSpeed matters,\u201d the company said, with chief customer officer Anna Perrin adding that the uplift will \u201csupport Australian homes and businesses to stay ahead of the curve and handle the data demands of today, and the years to come.\u201d<\/p>\n Why is NBN Co doing this?<\/p>\n NBN Co has been working<\/a> to upgrade most premises to fibre, which is easier to manage and provides faster broadband than the now obsolete<\/a> fibre-to-the-node (FTTN), fibre-to-the-basement (FTTB) and other technologies it used in the past.<\/p>\n Last year, it committed<\/a> to boosting connection speeds as a \u201cresponse to the step-change in technology adoption and usage in Australia and globally,\u201d the company said<\/a> as it teased free upgrades that \u201cleverage the growing capabilities of fibre connectivity.\u201d<\/p>\n It\u2019s about more than altruism, however: NBN Co has been trying to increase its revenues to pay off the billions of dollars\u2019 worth of debt that it borrowed from government<\/a> and private sources to build and operate its network.<\/p>\n To do that, it needs to increase the average revenue per user (ARPU) that it earns \u2013 which has stayed stable<\/a> for years \u2013 but the only way to do that is to run FTTP<\/a> to more homes and businesses that will pay more for the faster services it enables.<\/p>\n Those services are impossible to deliver homes and businesses stuck on outdated <\/a>and expensive<\/a> FTTN, so NBN Co has been migrating<\/a> old services to FTTP as quickly as it can \u2013 and Accelerate Great is a carrot to get property owners onboard.<\/p>\n Who is eligible?<\/p>\n If you already have FTTP or HFC, and you\u2019re among the 2.8 million customers<\/a> with 100Mbps or faster services \u2013 around 35 per cent of all installed NBN services \u2013 you\u2019re already eligible for the boosted speeds, and NBN Co has already boosted your speeds automatically.<\/p>\n If you\u2019re on fibre but running a slower 25Mbps or 50Mbps broadband plan, you need to upgrade to a plan running at 100Mbps or faster to access the new speeds.<\/p>\n If you\u2019re not on fibre or HFC, you need to check<\/a> with NBN Co to see if you\u2019re eligible for an upgrade to fibre; many ISPs are bundling a fibre upgrade with the new plans to make it easier to switch.<\/p>\n If you\u2019re using a fixed wireless or satellite NBN connection, you\u2019ll have to sit this one out \u2013 although NBN Co has been working to increase fixed wireless<\/a> and satellite<\/a> speeds too.<\/p>\n How much faster are we talking here?<\/p>\n There are three different speed bumps depending on what service you have already:<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n If you currently have this plan…<\/p>\n
Your new broadband speed will be:<\/p>\n
nbn Home Fast II<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n Currently running at 100\/20 Mbps<\/p>\n
500\/50 Mbps<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n (downloads 5x faster, uploads 2.5x faster)<\/p>\n
nbn Home Superfast<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n 250\/25 Mbps<\/p>\n
750\/50 Mbps<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n (downloads 3x faster, uploads 2x faster)<\/p>\n
nbn Home Ultrafast<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n 500Mbps to 1Gbps\/50Mbps<\/p>\n
500Mbps-1Gbps\/100Mbps uploads<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n (uploads 2x faster)<\/p>\n
NBN Co has also introduced two new 2Gbps speed tiers: nbn Home Hyperfast \u2013 which offers 2Gbps downloads and uploads of either 200Mbps (on FTTP connections) or 100Mbps (on HFC) \u2013 and a 2Gbps\/500Mbps business service called nbn Business 2000 Pro<\/a>.<\/p>\n Remember that the network inside your home also needs to support the faster speeds, so review your network and WiFi configuration \u2013 consider upgrading to modern Wi-Fi 7 devices \u2013 to ensure the new speeds deliver a better experience for your company or family.<\/p>\n Is it going to cost me more?<\/p>\n NBN Co is offering the speed upgrades for free, so if you\u2019re already on a 100Mbps or faster service you won\u2019t have to pay any extra for the additional speeds \u2013 unless you want the new 2Gbps plans, in which case your ISP can provide the new pricing.<\/p>\n NBN Co\u2019s wholesale pricing<\/a> currently sits at $58.53 per month (for 25\/5Mbps FTTN to 500\/50Mbps FTTP plans) to $126.50 per month (for 1Gbps\/400Mbps) and $150 per month for the fastest 2Gbps\/500Mbps service.<\/p>\n Remember that NBN Co is a wholesale network provider, so it is selling its services to ISPs that mark up the cost of its services; most ISPs have taken the opportunity to overhaul their prices and many offer introductory discounts for new customers.<\/p>\n ISPs like Telstra<\/a>, Optus<\/a>, Dodo<\/a>, iPrimus<\/a> and others are keeping prices steady, for example, while Aussie Broadband<\/a> and Superloop<\/a> are offering introductory discounts and Exetel is offering<\/a> a new flat-rate 500\/50Mbps plan for $80 per month.<\/p>\n \u201cThis is one of the most significant NBN upgrades in years,\u201d said Andy O\u2019Connor, general manager of fixed line product at TPG Telecom, which launched \u201caggressive\u201d 500Mbps pricing of $64.99 per month (reverting to $94.99 monthly after 6 months) and a mesh WiFi option.<\/p>\n What if I\u2019m happy with my current speeds?<\/p>\n That\u2019s perfectly fine, too.<\/p>\n NBN Co is maintaining its entry level 25Mbps and 50Mbps plans, and will continue supporting current services until it finally convinces you to switch to fibre \u2013 although given years of complaints<\/a> about FTTN, it may not take much convincing!<\/p>\n If you\u2019re like most people, you may not have given your broadband much thought for a while: NBN Co says 62 per cent of Australians haven\u2019t changed<\/a> their home Internet setup in the last two years, and that two-thirds haven\u2019t upgraded their plan in the past five years.<\/p>\n Now is a great time to change that: intense price competition between ISPs means that even if you don\u2019t want to pay more for your broadband, you can probably get more value for the same money \u2013 or find a cheaper plan that better suits your current needs.<\/p>\n To see where you\u2019re sitting against current offerings, drop by a broadband comparison site like Finder<\/a>, WhistleOut<\/a>, Canstar Blue<\/a>, or Compare Broadband<\/a> to find out what option best matches your current requirements.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Faster internet, anyone? Photo: Shutterstock Millions of Australian homes and businesses are enjoying significantly faster speeds after NBN…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":22618,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[85,123,46,125],"class_list":{"0":"post-22617","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-internet","8":"tag-il","9":"tag-internet","10":"tag-israel","11":"tag-technology"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22617","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22617"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22617\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/22618"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22617"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22617"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22617"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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