It’s an exciting time for speedy internet-hungry Aussies. With the NBN speed upgrade in full swing, millions of Australians are waking up to internet as much as five times faster than they’d previously signed up for. With higher internet speeds available at cheaper prices than ever, there are more opportunities to save money, too.
I’ve been with Aussie Broadband for some years now. They’re on the pricier side of Australian internet telcos, but the service quality and local customer service are excellent. From my experience, their status as Australia’s most trusted telco, as crowned by Roy Morgan, is well deserved.
Before the NBN upgrade, I was on an NBN 250 plan, which was $129 per month, until wholesale price changes brought it down to $119.
I work from home and live in a household of gamers; it’s not uncommon for modern games to exceed 100GB download sizes. Some months, our data usage floats anywhere between one and two terabytes.
When it’s the difference between waiting several hours for a download to complete or being able to quickly jump online and play with friends, high-speed internet is a luxury I’m happy to pay for.
After the NBN speed upgrade automatically boosted my plan to 750Mbps download speeds, I had a moment of reflection. Do I really need internet that fast? Running an internet speed test and exceeding 750Mbps on a wired connection looked pretty nice, I won’t lie.
Save money by choosing the internet plan you need
As much as an NBN 750 plan looked nice on paper, I didn’t really need it. For my needs (and wants), it made much more sense to drop down to Aussie’s NBN 500 plan, which costs $95 per month. I could save $24 each month and still get double the speeds I was on before the NBN upgrade.
To use some quick back-of-the-napkin maths, downloading a 100GB file on a 750Mbps connection would take roughly less than 20 minutes. On a 500Mbps plan, it’d take just under half an hour.
Would paying $24 more every month be worth a 10-minute difference when downloading the latest game? Nah, not for me. Sure, the time savings would add up, but not substantially enough to warrant a pricier plan.
If I worked all day sending 4K video files to and from clients, for example, it might be a different story. But I don’t, so 500Mbps is a nice sweet spot for my current internet needs. Not to mention the 50Mbps upload speeds, which is a nice doubling of what I previously had. In the end, making the switch was an easy decision
So, if you woke up to exponentially faster internet overnight, consider dropping down a plan. You could still have faster internet than before, and at a cheaper price. Naturally, this advice mainly applies to people who were on NBN 250 or faster plans. If you were on NBN 100, enjoy the faster speeds!
As I said before, Aussie Broadband is more expensive than a lot of NBN providers out there. To find the best internet plan for your needs, I recommend comparing the cheapest overall NBN plans alongside the cheapest NBN 500 plans.
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