Early last year, I claimed that Australians were abandoning slower internet speeds. At the time, it was an accurate assertion, albeit a short-lived one. Now, with the NBN wholesale speed upgrade around the corner, Aussies might be saying goodbye to slow plans for good.
When I made my original observation, ACCC’s wholesale broadband report showed a sharp decline in residential NBN 50 services, offset by an almost equal spike in NBN 100 services. Only half a year later, that trend reversed, as Australians reverted to cheaper internet plans.
Major factors behind the initial trend included a combination of telco discounts and the revised Special Access Undertaking (SAU). The SAU resulted in NBN 100 plans dropping in price, while NBN 50, traditionally the most popular speed tier, grew pricier.
Not long afterwards, however, people returned to NBN 50 plans — which were still slightly cheaper than NBN 100 plans — in almost equal numbers. But since 2023, increasingly more Australians have taken up NBN internet plans with 100Mbps download speeds and faster.
Faster internet for more Australians
NBN Co, the infrastructure provider responsible for the NBN network, announced in its 2025 financial year report that 2.77 million Australian premises are connected to plans of 100Mbps and above. It’s an increase from 2.08 million last year, and closely aligns with the roughly 500,000 extra Fibre to the Premises (FTTP) connections year-on-year.
Helping attract more people to NBN’s higher tiers is the promise of even faster speeds in September. As part of NBN Co’s ‘Accelerate Great’ project, plans of 100Mbps and above will automatically increase at no cost to consumers. It’ll result in plans with faster download speeds of 500Mbps and 750Mbps respectively, while the NBN 1000 tier doubles its upload speeds to 100 Mbps.
Additionally, for the first time, NBN will offer a residential multigigabit plan, with download speeds reaching 2,000Mbps and uploads of 200Mbps. However, the upgraded speeds will only be available to premises with FTTP or Hybrid Fibre Coaxial (HFC) connections. Millions of Australians are eligible for a free FTTP upgrade, but with NBN 50 plans still a comfortably cheaper alternative, cost is likely a prohibitive factor.
According to NBN Co CEO, Ellie Sweeney, the internet infrastructure provider wants NBN 500 plans, previously NBN 100, to become the most popular, displacing NBN 50’s longstanding popularity.
“Looking to the future, it is NBN’s aim that our 500 Mbps wholesale speed tier becomes Australia’s most popular NBN plan,” Sweeney said. “And thanks to our investments in the latest technologies and network upgrades, we expect to lift average fixed broadband speeds across the nation.”
This push for faster internet is driven by NBN Co’s expectation that Australian homes will have an average of 44 internet-connected devices by 2030. Its research says that each premise downloads 508GB each month on average, up from 460GB a year ago. More devices and more downloads point towards a higher demand for speed.
Some telcos are cashing in early, selling various NBN 500 plans ahead of the September upgrade. For remote Australians, NBN Co hopes that its satellite internet partnership with Amazon’s Project Kuiper will fill the cabled void.
All of this is to say that Australia’s internet ecosystem is about to change dramatically.
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