The Fastest Unlimited NBN Plans

Everyone wants fast internet, but unfortunately, getting speedy NBN isn’t as simple as it should be. There are so many factors that can affect the speed and quality of your connection, and no one wants to be stuck with a service that craps out during peak hours.

While there’s big quality differences between ISPs, some do a pretty decent job of delivering consistently fast NBN. Thanks to the ACCC’s “Measuring Broadband Australia” testing program – based on real world data from Australian households – we’ve got a good idea of who they are.

The ACCC recently released its fourth report on real-world NBN speed, and it’s actually promising. There's always room for improvement, but most fixed-line NBN customers seem to get the speeds they’re paying for. Close to, at least.

TPG came out on top, delivering peak hour speeds that were 86.1% of plan maximums on average, while Aussie Broadband followed at 84.8%. Optus, Telstra, and MyRepublic were all close behind, delivering 83.9%, 82.7%, and 82% of their maximum speeds during busy periods, respectively. Lastly, Exetel, iiNet, and Dodo / iPrimus racked up 81.7%, 79.8%, and 78.9%.

These speed reports are still pretty new; at present, they only cover 908 individual NBN connections across 15 different providers. As such, the ACCC’s testing isn’t necessarily the final world on NBN speed. But at the same time, it’s a good start; peak hour download speeds between 80Mbps and 90Mbps ain’t bad. And it’s always nice to have data from an independent body.

Here's a look at how these providers price their unlimited NBN 100 plans:

There are a few deals worth calling out here. MyRepublic is currently running a promo that gets you your first year for $79.95 per month, which makes it one of the cheapest NBN 100 plans around. You’ll pay $89.95 per month thereafter, but the plan itself is no-contract so you can leave whenever.

If you’re also keen to change mobile provider, TPG will give you three free months of mobile service when you sign an 18-month NBN contract.

Telstra doesn't sell NBN 100 plans as a standalone product. If you want NBN 100 speeds on Telstra, you'll need to sign up for one of the NBN 50 plans below first. If your physical connection to the NBN is fast enough, you'll then be able to upgrade to a 100Mbps plan for an extra $30 per month.

While Telstra might be the priciest out of this lot, it’s currently waiving the $99 connection charge when you sign-up online. You don’t have to pay for a modem upfront, but if you cancel within 24 months of connecting, you’ll need to pay a modem fee. This is based on the outright modem cost – $218 – and decreases by $9 for each month you stay connected.

Alex Choros is Managing Editor at WhistleOut, Australia's phone and internet comparison website.

As Kotaku editors we write about stuff we like and think you'll like too. Kotaku often has affiliate partnerships, so we may get a share of the revenue from your purchase.


    Telstra's policy of signing people up to a 50 Mb/s plan first seems like a decent one, given the variable performance of FTTN connections. It probably also helps drive up their stats in ability to meet plan speeds.

    What would be really useful is if the ACCC broke down their stats by plan speed in addition to ISP. For example, I'm surprised that TPG and iiNet have markedly different results: is that because TPG is throttling customers on the iiNet brand, or is it because there is a different mix of 25, 50, and 100 Mb/s customers for the two brands?

      Having dealt a bit with telstra to start with they only have to provide 50% of the plan speed minimum. Weird scenario, getting 15 to 20 mbps on their 50 plan asked for the upgrade to 100, was getting 30+mbps, which for around here was pretty good, then they cut the 100 plan for the entire town as they couldnt provide the speed so we got put back down to 15 to 20 mbps.

      Is there something i dont understand about providing these speeds? Does it somehow put a physical strain on something somewhere if i have 30mbps even though it was supposed to be 100 and why couldnt i keep those speeds, whats the reason for the drop?

        Presumably they were bandwidth limited in either the CVC purchased to the POI, or the backhaul to their own network.

        It wouldn't be surprising if they shared out the limited bandwidth proportionally based on the plan you bought. So on the 100 Mb/s plan, you might have been receiving twice the share of people on a 50 Mb/s plan.

        What jamesh said..

        When the RSP buys bandwidth, they really don't need much more capability than the peak for a single user, simply because of how data works. You send it in packets, and there are gaps between what you send, which a) means you don't actually use 100% of your true speed, and b) lets most people happily slot into the gaps they need. Its just how it works.

        So if the peak requirement is 50 Mbps, they'll only have about 80 Mbps total - 50 up, 20 down, and a little on top for spurts. Then proper congestion kicks in, and in peak hours those packets trip over each other and end up waiting for a gap, rather than finding one immediately.

        20 hours of the day its not a problem, so would be a waste. The 4 hours we care about though is a different story. So you're starting with smaller potential, and running into other data more often.

        With the bigger potential speed of 100 Mbps, they start off with more bandwidth. So instead of about 80 Mbps, they have 170 Mbps for the same reasons - little more than a single users maximum. As the network cant hit that, they stop connecting you to that bandwidth, because of NBN and ACCC laws.

      iNet owns TPG.

        It's the other way around: TPG bought iiNet a few years back. What surprised me is that the two brands have different scores, when I would have expected them to be sharing most of their infrastructure these days.

    I can vouch that MyRepublic give you the speeds you actually pay for. Had two other NBN isps who struggled to do half the speed on a 100Mb plan.

      I can vouch they are the biggest shit bags etver.

      I got speeds of between 0.01 and 7 in the evening. Averaged 97 in the middle of the day. Then had to cancel 3 times because they kept charging me after I ended the contract and the promised refunds never arrived. Got in contact with the ombudsman, laid out the evidence and he cc'd me in on the email to them [paraphrased] "Fix this shit or else". Someone called next day and made it right and returned all my stolen money once their butt was on the line.

      Had to fight tooth and nail to get out of an MR contract, speeds went to shit during peak, and Rainbow Six Siege was being routed thru South America.


      Last edited 02/04/19 1:47 pm

    I tried MyRepublic when they first started up on a FTTP premises in a new unit block in the CBD in Brisbane. They were garbage and couldn't provide the evening speeds. Probably due to CVCs.

    I switched to Aussie Broadband on a whirlpool offer and I've been on it ever since. $80 for 500GB on a 100/40 connection. I ALWAYS get 93+/35+. They're amazing. They send you notifications of maintenance etc.

    When the nbn first came to my area I was on a 100mb plan and was getting 57mb steady for almost 2 years then it dropped to 28mb... 3 months of getting no answers and spoke with ACCC and CCO, ended up getting a bunch of credits aplied, but no answer to why speed dropped. Also my next door neighbor and one across the road were on telstra 50mb plan and were also only getting 28mb ... so I swapped to My republic and they had a weird disclaimer about you had to wave your rights to Australian consumer laws to enable to them to provide a better service for you.... I stupidly did a 12 month contract assuming that from all the reviews saying they had fast speeds and me assuming that they had more bandwidth in my area joined up. Well are cheap but I can say that their customer service is none existent except for live chat which works fine but have had serveral different experiences ranging from good service to rude , but the speed is slower only get 24-26 and ping much higher 36 compared to telstras 3-9 ping :( so I might end up breaking contract and going with Aussie broadband, kicking myself I didn’t just go with AB

      Legally you can't waive any of your rights under law, signed contract or no.

      A lot of them do that if you look closely. I"m with TPG and they ask that you waive your rights to what they call 'customer service guarantee' which means getting compensation if the service doesn't perform as it should. But they do that as they know there are dips and troughs in the speed and what not so it's basically them covering their ass that they don't have to shell out huge $$$ for complaints related to speed/connection issues that they don't control. It's a shady tactic but they won't connect you if you don't waive it full stop. Having said that, i've had issues and they've credited me so it's unlikely a deal breaker.

      For the average joe i wouldn't worry. It's more to avoid getting huge $$$ from someone that claims downtime is wrecking their business etc. But those people generally run a business on a residential plan/support so they have no one to blame except themselves.

    Wow, it would be nice to have choice. Stuck with a sole provider with 1-2Mbps download speed adsl2+. NBN, well that's satellite - expensive and I've been told unsuitable for office VPN. Guess you have to live in a city to get great speed and/or bandwidth.

      You can send a thank-you letter to your National's representative for supporting Labor's original NBN rollout plan and not shitting where they eat for the sake of playing politics..... oh.... wait...

        Heh, the three areas that voted Independents rather than Nationals all got Fibre NBN. For some dumb reason though they voted out those independents next election, and places have slowly turned into shitholes again.

      I'm 2km away from Sydney CBD and I'm still waiting for NBN. I get 6mbps if i'm lucky.

    " a service that craps out during peak hours". That pretty much describes mine. I'm paying Internode, which is owned by iiNet, which is owned by TPG, about $80 a month for 25Mbps fixed wireless (rural area). After school closing time until about 11pm I'm often reduced to about 5Mbps. What a joke this NBN is, especially for us "country folk".

      To be fair on Internode, I don't think it would matter what service provider you chose, a wireless connection is inherently a shared resource and is entirely dependent on how many people are using the spectrum in use.
      On wired connections, peak bottlenecks can be due to a lack of CVCs purchased by your RSP, but on wireless there's nothing more that can be done once the link is saturated with users.
      This still is a complete joke though, and shows how woefully underprovisioned the fixed wireless component is.

    Was with ABB - their network is awesome, great speeds all the time, but $100 a month for 100/40 (or $110 for me with static) is a bit more than I want to pay.

    Moved to Superloop, very similar company to ABB, except are only now coming into the retail side. $90 with a static IP, and speeds and pings are the same as ABB.

      I'm currently with Superloop too, 100/40 unlimited. No issues at all so far, but I'm lucky enough to have FTTP.

        I was with Skymesh then they changed to Superloop. I'm enjoying the same speeds I had before only now I have unlimited which is a nice change.

    Can someone explain now that we're on a network owned by NBNco, what's the justification behind Telstra blatantly price gouging like they currently are compared to other companies?

    Myaussie broadband is pretty good as a service provider. Haven't really looked at prices in the past few months but as far as customer service goes they're tops.

    But at the end of the day, it all comes down to the quality of the copper and how far you are from a node, also how far that node is from an exchange.

      * uploads comment @ 40 Mbps over FTTP connection *

    If you live in a new(ish) housing estate but NBN isnt available, you should check with Opticomm as you may already have FTTP available at your premise.
    I've lived in my house for nearly 2 years (the estate is 7-8 years old) and when we moved in the only response from NBN was that I had to wait until NBN is rolled out and my only option until then was 4G connection with Optus.
    However, when Foxtel was installed earlier this week, it turns out we have FTTP already and can get it connected now. The difference being it's not with NBN providers but with Opticomm providers.
    TL/DR go to opticomm dot net dot au and check your address. You might not have to put up with/wait for NBN.

Join the discussion!

Trending Stories Right Now