More than any other internet speed, Australians flock to NBN 50 plans like seagulls to a hot chip. As far as home internet goes, it’s relatively affordable and fast enough for most people’s needs.
More than half of residential connections are NBN 50 plans, indicating its widespread popularity. Even though the speed tier was impacted by wholesale price changes, it hasn’t deterred the many people who rely on it for home internet.
What’s great about many of the cheapest NBN plans is the absence of lock-in contracts. Most internet service providers (ISPs) let you sign up and leave as you wish, making it easy to swap to a better deal.
ISPs typically offer an introductory discount lasting six months, before the standard pricing kicks in. Like cheap SIM plans, it’s worth shopping around every six months to keep your telco bills down.
Without further ado, here are the cheapest and best fixed-line NBN 50 plans with unlimited data. For faster internet speeds, you can also compare the cheapest NBN 100 plans and the cheapest NBN 250 plans.
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Cheapest NBN 50 plans
There’s plenty of competition between NBN 50 providers, with both Dodo and Tangerine offering sub-$60 plans. Prices across the two ISPs are near-identical, both during and after promotional discounts.
Normally $80 a month, the Dodo NBN 50 plan costs just $59 for the first six months. Afterwards, you start paying $80 each month. Similarly, Tangerine’s discounted price is $59.90, down from $79.90.
The only substantially cheaper ISP without discounts is Kogan. Its Silver Unlimited plan costs $68.90 every month, with a three-month initial discount bringing it down to $58.90.
What’s the best plan?
“Best” is a subjective term, particularly when it comes to NBN 50 plans. Unlike faster internet plans, you don’t see much speed variation between ISPs at this level. No matter who you choose, you should get similar speeds at all hours of the day.
Still, it doesn’t hurt to check the ACCC’s Measuring Broadband Australia report. Published quarterly, it includes independent analysis of each ISP’s performance. Here, you’ll find measurements of key metrics like average speeds during peak hours, and outage frequency.
As of the most recent report, Exetel is one of the top performers, closely followed by Telstra and Optus. A main unit of measurement used by ISPs is ” typical evening speeds”, referring to a plan’s average speeds between 7pm and 11pm every day.
This is considered peak usage time when there’s the most congestion. The best NBN plans tend to be those that see minimal disruption at night and over weekends.
Why choose NBN 50?
Named NBN 50 for the 50Mbps (megabits per second) download speeds it provides, this plan offers plenty for modern households. It can sustain multiple HD (1080p) streams simultaneously or even a few UHD (4K) streams. So, NBN 50 is more than enough if most of your internet use revolves around watching TV, movies, and live sport online.
Playing online multiplayer games is fine too, although larger install sizes will take longer to download. NBN 50 isn’t slow by any means, capable of downloading 1GB in a few minutes. If you regularly download big files amounting to tens of gigabytes, you might want a faster plan, unless you don’t mind waiting a couple of hours.
Upload speeds on NBN 50 plans can get up to 20Mbps, like most NBN 100 plans. For most people, this is enough. However, if you work from home, upload videos to YouTube, or livestream, a faster plan could be more helpful.
Regardless of speeds, NBN 50 plans are a good choice for many Australians due to availability. It doesn’t matter if you have a fibre to the node (FTTN) or fibre to the premises (FTTP) connection, you can still get NBN 50. FTTP enables NBN 250 and faster plans, but not everyone needs those speeds.
Alternatives to NBN 50 plans
Want to check all your options? NBN 50 suits plenty of smaller households but the more people under one roof, and therefore more connected devices, a faster connection makes more sense.
People working from home or gamers, for example, benefit from faster download and upload speeds, reducing wait times and letting you get stuck into work or play sooner.
Here are the lowest current prices on NBN 100 plans:
Meanwhile, faster NBN 250 plans, also known as Superfast, cost just a bit more:
If you’ve got the need for speed, check out these NBN 1000 deals:
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