Like it or loathe it, the NBN rollout is going full-steam-ahead. The government has reportedly connected over 3 million premises meaning that more and more people each month are asking the same question: which NBN plan should I get?
There’s plenty to consider, but if you were always planning on jumping on an 100Mbps plan as soon as you could, it’d be handy to know whether it is worth it or not. For example, how much extra do you pay for NBN100 compared with a basic NBN12 plan?
What’s remarkable about NBN pricing so far is how uniform it is. Telco products are renowned for being complex and hard to compare, but the NBN plans available so far are remarkably simple. This could all change with big companies like Amaysim and Vodafone entering the market later in the year, or when we start seeing more compelling content bundling to factor in.
Taking a look at the pricing for top 10 most popular providers in our database right now, a very clear pattern emerges. Most NBN12 plans cost about $60 per month, and the boosts in speed cost $10 per increment, so that the average price difference is about $30 per month between the fastest and the slowest (well, $32.50 if you want to get specific).
There are a couple of outliers in the market, though. Most notably MyRepublic with its one-size-fits-all NBN100 plan for $59.95 per month. Another interesting thing we noticed is how many of the RSPs are choosing not to offer NBN50 plans at all. In fact, the larger and more well-known an RSP is, the less likely it is to have 50Mbps plans.
Cheapest NBN100 Plans (Unlimited Data, No Contract)
Cheapest NBN50 Plans (Unlimited Data, No Contract)
Cheapest NBN25 Plans (Unlimited Data, No Contract)
Cheapest NBN12 Plans (Unlimited Data, No Contract)
Joe Hanlon is Publisher at WhistleOut, Australia’s phone and internet comparison website. He’s been writing about phones and plans for far too long.
Comments
19 responses to “Planhacker: How Much More Do You Pay For NBN100?”
The problem we have as consumers is that just comparing on price and quotas isn’t enough. The CVC capacity/contention has such a dramatic impact on the quality of service that ACCC will have to move to have it somehow disclosed for all connections so as consumers can get a comparison of the actual quality of service they can reasonably expect.
Contention is the biggest issue with serviced speed, but its both NBN, and the ISP. They buy capacity, and use that to service the users. They get given a basic amount for free (from memory, 150 Mbps capacity) then pay an amount per Mbps above that.
As they are trying to reduce costs as much as possible, they end up only buying a minimum above that free volume, which means at peak capacity it slows down when too many people are downloading at 12 Mb/s.
Basically, they buy a 2 lane road knowing that for 20 hours of the day its plenty, but for 4 hours a day rush hour is going to slow everyone down. Theres no point buying a 4 lane road, its wasted cost just to service that relatively small window of time.
Thats the ISP side of it, and from their perspective I can understand it. Why pay for something thats not going to be used most of the time?
The ISP’s need inducements to have more capacity in those peak loads. And THAT is where NBN can help. Like how power services have peak and offpeak costs, find a way ISP’s can get more capacity in peak periods, without maxing out the cost.
Thats how ISP’s can blame NBN for slow speeds (ie, the cost), and NBN can blame the ISP (their minimal capacity). If there was a way for an ISP to have twice the capacity from 6pm to 10pm, contention would disappear.
Also there are different issues related to the last mile delivery technology of the endpoints. HFC is shared (500-600 houses) with your whole neighbourhood, which is similar with FFTN (100-250) but on a different scale. FTTP is almost no sharing between you and your neighbours beyond the POI backhaul for your RSP. FTTDP (FTTC) is shared but on a small scale (dozens of houses). So these factors make it difficult to show contention in a true way.
It’s almost like someone planned it to fail. Oh wait they did, couldn’t let Labor have another multi generational success story like Medicare or free education. Damn I hate politicians.
That and the 4 major companies with the highest bandwidth share of the CVC capacity are Telstra, Optus, iiNet and TPG… of which NOT LISTED ABOVE!!!
Can someone explain why they couldn’t have the prices match the currect ADSL2+ prices? Then this stupid 12Mb speed can die and the starting speed would be 25Mb
I can’t believe I’m saying this but: credit to Telstra here as they do this.
25/5 is the minimum offered for all of their NBN connections and the same price for their “bundles” regardless of ADSL/HFC/NBN access type.
On the flip side they don’t offer unlimited plans, and their pricing for a 500GB bundle is on par with the NBN50 tier from other cheaper providers.
Although, I guess they also have more money to purchase more CVC than these providers… Which doesn’t make the value seem so bad if you’re willing to pay a bit more for less contention.
Just tried the WhistleOut website and the offered plans weren’t available on the linked providers pages.
Anyone else experienced that?
I switched to Optus Cable (2 year contract) when NBN was projected to be three years away for me. Then 6 months later I got the surprise that HFC nbn had been switched on and optus cable was being deactivated. Still within my 2 years I felt limited to Optus. But I am on 50/20 for $75 a month.
Looking above it seems like I could have done much worse.
Umm…. thats a photo of an SDI video patch bay…..
Just like any TV station has lots of.
At least its digital.
Glad someone else spotted that. Copper coaxial connections are a long way from fibre.
How is MyRepublic pulling this off? Is this a case of signing everyone up to 100mb then telling them in 12 months it’s going to be $99pm or 50mb?
Probably purchasing minimum CVC and/or selling at a loss to get a foothold in the market while being supported by its Singapore counterpart.
Not to mention taking close to 60 days for a new connection and having NO customer support whatsoever (well…they don’t answer calls and only respond to tweets or emails when you mention the Telecommunications Ombudsman)
Too expensive, as usual from the greed-mongers, mobile phone calls are also too expensive. One would think that the advancement in technology would reduce prices, especially for low-paid wage earners and pensioners.
Fuel for vehicles with more economical engines, up go the fuel costs, again, greed rules all!
This analysis does appear to include iinet
It reminds me of the old days with dial up ISP’s (Alphalink). Good luck getting a quake match happening during the school holidays (or even checking email). If you could connect, the ping was so slow it wasn’t worth the effort.
I’m paying $59 for NBN 12/1M connection. Sadly I got it with 18 months contract.
I’m paying $59 for NBN 12/1M connection. Sadly I got it with 18 months contract.
I have FTTP with Telstra Velocity in a “smart community” so I can’t get NBN. Worse still is there is only one other provider that will offer me internet apart from Telstra and that is Internode and they are so expensive that you pretty much have to stay with Telstra.
Hey at least I have FTTP but i’m not getting my 100mbps speeds like I should.
TPG unlimited 100/40 with home phone, $99/month.
NBNsp 100/40 $90.