NBN Speeds Explained
This article is no longer current
For the latest information, please visit: https://blog.iinet.net.au/nbn-speeds/
In order to help Australians make informed choices when it comes to the NBN™, iiNet is amongst the first Internet Service Providers to follow recommendations from the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) to advertise typical evening speeds for NBN™.
These speeds measure the typical download speeds nationwide between 7PM to 11PM (local time). This is when the network is busiest and performance issues such as congestion are the most likely to occur, so measuring speeds during this period provides more realistic information about the speeds you can expect to experience on the NBN™.
As of 20 June 2018, iiNet advertises the following speeds for NBN™ FTTP, FTTB, FTTN, FTTC & HFC services:
- Basic: Typical evening speed 9.6Mbps download
- Standard: Typical evening speed 19.2Mbps download
- Standard Plus: Typical evening speed 46.0Mbps download
- Premium: Typical evening speed 78.5Mbps download
iiNet Business NBN™ services measure typical speeds during weekday business hours (i.e. 9AM – 5PM local time) as this is more useful to business customers. View our Business NBN plans to see these speeds.
Other factors affecting the speeds you may experience
Unique factors affecting NBN™ FTTN/FTTB services
As explained in Connecting to the NBN™ Network, NBN™ FTTN/FTTB services use copper cabling to connect the customer’s premises to a Node or Main Distribution Frame. You can check the NBN™ technology available at your address on our website.
The length and quality of this copper cabling has a significant effect on the customer’s connection speed, particularly in areas where NBNCo has installed fewer Nodes than originally planned, resulting in increased cable length.
Additionally, NBN™ FTTN/FTTB networks will typically run slower during the 18 month transitional period (known as the coexistence period) after NBN™ first goes live. This is required in order for NBN™ FTTN/FTTB to coexist with legacy non-NBN™ services. After 18 months, legacy copper services are typically disconnected and NBN™ FTTN/FTTB performance improves.
As per the ACCC’s guidelines, NBN™ FTTB and FTTN customers will receive an email within the first month of connecting with us, advising what the maximum attainable speed on their connection is. This will help you choose an NBN™ that suits the capability of your connection.
More improvements to come
iiNet NBN™ customers were found to be the most satisfied in two independent, national surveys (details here and here). As such, iiNet has a serious commitment to providing the Australian public with the information they need in order to make informed decisions when choosing an NBN™ plan.
We’re currently investigating ways to provide even more detailed speed information to customers when they make an enquiry about the speeds they can expect at a specific address.
For more information about ACCC’s guidelines, visit accc.gov.au.
41 comments
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It’s concerning to hear you felt your concerns were ignored, Kevin. We would recommend resuming contact with our Support (13 22 58) team and requesting to escalate the matter to a Senior Representative should you have any issues getting this sorted.
Let us know how you go,
– Brianna
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After 7 years, plus, waiting for the NBN at Oaklands Park, SA I was happy to be told, with fanfares, in August that it would be connected at my place on Nov. 24th……Oh joy, Oh joy
It was soon Nov. 24th and the industrial noise on the road not to be heard and although IINETs NBN page still proclaimed Nov. 24th, I was some days later, when inquiring about it, told politely that that NBN had decided to stop installing after Dec. 10th due to a mountain of complaints and faults.
My area wold be installed later, but not before September 2018.What a farce.
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Hi Finn,
Thanks for your post! Yes that’s correct, on 27 Nov NBNCo announced it would temporarily pause all new installs over its HFC access network, which will be in effect until field work is undertaken by NBNCo to raise the quality of service for end users. We’re expecting somewhere between six and nine months.
You can read more in the media release from NBN here:
https://www.nbnco.com.au/corporate-information/media-centre/media-releases/improved-customer-experience.htmlWe appreciate that it’s a bit of a pain for those excited to get connected to the NBN, but rest assured we will have you up and running as soon as NBNCo are ready to go again!
Cheers,
– Brianna
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I signed up on a 100Mbit plan, which morphed in to a “max” plan.Only 2 weeks ago after complaining of a sudden speed dorp on my previously very good ( 95Mbit actual) 100Mbit plan, Im told its now a Max plan that has a minimum standard of 25Mbit. I look just now and the Max plan has once again morphed and now advertises average evening speed at 50Mbit. Im currrently going through a tiresome process of recording myn own internet performance for iinet so “maybe” they will refer my line problem to NBN. Alos I was initially told the minimum standard was 25Mbit only to later be told its 40Mbit on my plan, which is it?
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Hi Craig,
The rules in Australia require us to state a typical evening speed (between 7-11pm). The typical evening speed is based on a conservative average and you may experience faster speeds. Outside of the 7pm to 11pm window, you should get faster speeds than the typical evening speeds because the network less busy.
– Leo
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I have a question on HFC. I understand the rollout will be delayed and this will affect me.
My question is on the HFC technology. Is the coaxial cable used to be new and installed by NBN or would my old Telstra cable be used for this process? The second part is will that coaxial cable be impacted by user users and therefore have serious congestion issues, even more so than FTTN?-
Hi Marcel,
The NBN HFC rollout, when it resumes, will continue to use the legacy coaxial networks but with upgrades to improve performance. Part of the rollout halt is designed to address performance issues within the network.
– Leo
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What about upload speeds – they arent mentioned anywhere I can see?
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I was contemplating getting fetch tv over my nbn to the node connection. Using your ping speed tester I got an error message stating that either the server being pinged was down OR my firewall was blocking the signal. Does this mean that you cannot have a firewall if you want speeds compatible with using fetch tv. We only use the internet for browsing at present so have not come across this before. I certainly NEED a firewall in preference to just desiring fetch tv. I do not use WIFI on my standard Iinet supplied modem.
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Hi Beth,
Fetch is designed to work through your connection and should have no issues with firewalls. Therefore, its possible that the server you were pinging was the issue.
– Leo
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Hi,
I was wondering why the Turbo and Max tiers upload speeds have such a wide minimum to maximum. (“Between 1mbps and 20mbps/40mbps) Why do you guys not provide a “Typical evening speeds” type value for that?
I understand I am probably in the minority of customers favoring upload speeds, but that information is a huge deciding factor on what plan I would look for.I guess I do not fully grasp why upstream and downstream is not treated the same.
Thanks for reading, looking forward to a reply.
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Hi Dave,
Upload speeds are based on the wholesale upload speeds for each speed tier. For instance an nbn12 plan is configured on a wholesale nbn12 speed tier that has an upload speed of 1Mbps.
– Leo
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Tried all suggested pages to find upload speeds but get ‘File not found.’ for every one.
I’m on an NBN12 plan. What should be my daytime upload speed?-
Hi Ray,
iiNet’s Basic NBN plan (nbn12) is configured on a wholesale nbn12 speed tier that has an upload speed of 1Mbps.
– Brianna
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What speeds will the new fttc systym be expected to run at.
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HI iiNet, 6 months ago ordered NBN, which I was then told would be NBN HFC service because previous owner had cable (foxtel or other that we never used) running into the premises. Also told it’ll now be not before Sept 2018. I can live with that – I know it can’t be helped.
My question is that I’ve ordered the MAX plan to get max speeds (100MBPS) and wonder whether these speeds on HFC service are likely to be same as, better or worse, than NBN FTTB/FTTN? Can you explain the difference and whether one is ‘better’ than the other? I’m currently getting Max of 6Mbps on ADSL2+ of the advertised 20Mbps Max possible for those closer to the exchange and really looking forward to higher speeds – if not 100Mpbs even 25+ would be fantastic! Gotta be better than 6! Ha!-
Hi Steve,
We have more information on NBN speeds, here:
Click on the link partway down the page that says:
“Learn about the factors that can affect your internet speeds.”
We also have an article on each NBN type and what can affect them, here:
https://iihelp.iinet.net.au/node/17104
– Leo
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We’re connect to NBN via the Turbo plan on NBN HFC.
Since upgrading from the Boost plan to the Turbo plan the download speed has increased to around the expected 50 Mbps.
The upload speed has not changed and is around 4.7 Mbps. I would expect that it should be around 20 Mbps.
The performance of backup to the cloud would be vastly improved if the upload speed was near the 50/20 as expected under the NBN50 wholesale product.
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Upload speeds were published previously. They are not anymore – why?
I’ve just changed from “boost” to “turbo” plan. Was getting 22 down and almost 5 up. Now am getting 47 down and almost 5 up. Seems that the upload speeds have not changed at all. Slightly disappointed, would be better to be able to know up-front.-
Hi Robert,
We’re concerned to hear that your upload speeds aren’t meeting your expectations. Whilst we have focussed on download speeds, we do want your uploads to be working effectively too. Have you had a chat to Support about this?
Factors that can affect your NBN speeds can be found here:
https://iihelp.iinet.net.au/node/17104– Leo
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Just back from a holiday in a country village in Ireland – pinged 45Mbps as basic. Friend in Cork gets 120 – no problem. Skibbereen in West Cork advertises itself as the first gigabyte town in RoI – yes – 1 Gig!! When is Australia going to join the 21st century? NBN is a joke, here and abroad.
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We’ve just joined iinet turbo which is supposed to give us 50mbps. So far the download at best is 29mbps & upload 7mbps off peak. Now we’ve been told by iinet that the modem they sent us is capped at 30mbps. We can’t even get the minimum of 42mbps. What the !?
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That’s strange, Deb. We’d encourage resuming contact with our Support (13 22 58) team as something doesn’t sound quite right here – Encourage requesting to speak with a Senior Representative as they will be able to investigate/verify the advice provided.
– Brianna
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I have been on the NBN 25 for about 6 months now and getting a speed of 22Mbps. I have now signed up to the Turbo 50 plan but no speed upgrade. I am still getting the same speed as my old 25 plan. Any help iinet ? I have spoken to customer support and they said it was the quality of the copper line we have? It has now been renewed but speed remains the same. I wonder if I am still on the 25 plan?
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Hi Tony,
We’d encourage reaching out to our Support (13 22 58) team so we can make sure the plan change was successfully processed. If you haven’t noticed any improvement at all, we will need to investigate what is the cause.
– Brianna
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My son signed up to the turbo plan two months ago loves it, only one short drop out in all that time.
Gets 18 down 5 up with Fibre to the node.
I was hoping he might get around 30, but with FTTN, their seems little hope of that, Even if he signed up for the fastest speed, he would still only get what he’s got now.
What he has is better than the ADSL2 he had, for him stability is paramount, as he lives on his own. -
Since no one replied to my last post, I will simplify a question.
Signing up to and paying for the turbo speed.
Is their anyway my son can get more than 18-20 down and 5 up, on a plan that promised around 40 when most are online in the evening, or is this the fastest speed he will ever get.-
Hi Bruce,
This is a bit of a complicated one.
Speeds on NBN are subject to many factors, which we discuss here:
https://iihelp.iinet.net.au/node/17104
If he isn’t achieving the desired speeds, then we would suggest that he contact’s Support for further assistance, or considers a plan downgrade.
– Leo
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I’m consistently getting 1/4 of the speeds I am paying for.
I recently upgraded from 50/mbs to 100/mbs and getting almost half the speed I was getting with 50/mbs.
I shouldn’t have to call and spend time on my only day off trying to fix these issues.
Provide what you offer…..or stop offering what you can not provide. Simple. I’ve been a customer of iinet for 10 years. First, their customer service went down the drain and now their entire service is following.-
Definitely sounds like there is an issue here, Stewart. We understand that calling on your day off isn’t ideal, however our Support (13 22 58) team will be the best people to get this sorted. We’ll likely need to run through some troubleshooting with you prior to looking at lodging a fault with NBN. We have troubleshooting guides available via iiHelp (https://iihelp.iinet.net.au) if you would like to get a head start.
Let us know how you get on,
– Brianna
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People should know by now that megabits are different from megabytes.
The OP said they complained about paying for 12 megabits per second and were getting 2.3 megabytes p/s. When the conversion per megabit is .125 megabytes p/s.
So you’re actually getting more out of your connection than you theoretically should be getting.
12mbps amounts to about 1.5 megabytes p/s
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Unless I’m wrong and they were saying they got 2.3 megabits p/s rather than 12.
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Uncertain as to if it is my areas infrastructure or IInet but I get abysmal speeds. I get 3mbps when I’m lucky and much much worse on some occasions. I know it isn’t being throttled because I watch my usage and can tell when I’m being throttled. Very disappointed that the only IInet plans in the area are minuscule 250gb plans, why not unlimited?
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Hi Ben,
This is certainly and interesting one and doesn’t sound like much fun at all, so thank you for bringing this to us.
A quick look at your posts suggests that you’re possibly in one of the areas where we can only retail an Off-Net ADSL2+ connection. Data limits on these plans are not able to be offered as Liimitless data due to the high costs of retailing these services that are provided through the wholesaler.
Having said that, we’d love to see what options we can offer you, just in case there is something we may be able to do to help. Please feel free to e-mail us directly with your details and citing this post, to iionline@iinet.net.au. We can then lend a hand to help.
– Leo
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We are still waiting our refund of $58.52 following ACCC action (ref: 326338034) since May 2018.
Each time we write back, similar replay is written back to us saying that they’ve forward the information to account department.
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It is almost without trace, any mention of upload speeds. To a small business interacting on the Internet this can be as important as download (I dislike the notion that everyone including business stream data to their premise and not produce or publish data the other way). Is this a deliberate de-emphasis or are we suppose to accept that we only work one way. It seems to me anecotally, that speeds upload do not exceed 5mb, deliberate or otherwise this is poor form. Interested to know iiNet position and reason for absolute silence on this aspect.
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Hi Michael,
Upload speeds are in line with each tier of speeds available on the NBN and like download speeds, are dependent on various factors. The upload speeds are:
Basic (NBN12): This plan is configured on a wholesale Basic speed tier that has an upload speed of 1Mbps.
Standard (NBN25) This plan is configured on a wholesale Standard speed tier that has an upload speed of 5Mbps.
Standard Plus (NBN50) This plan is configured on a wholesale Standard Plus speed tier that has an upload speed of 20Mbps.
Premium (NBN100) This plan is configured on a wholesale Premium speed tier that has an upload speed of 40Mbps.– Leo
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Still waiting for my email as per the ACCC’s guidelines, NBN™ FTTB and FTTN customers will receive an email within the first month of connecting, advising what the maximum attainable speed on the connection.
No email. Current speeds as of 3 minutes ago DOWNLOAD 6.3 Mbps and UPLOAD 0.8 Mbps.. Much slower than my old ADSL plan.
Fetch meant to be included, just got slugged yesterday $145 for Fetch since Feb.. Sent emails to question the bill and was told that it was right. Still don’t understand how.. Included free means free in my book.
Keep sending call back requests, no answer. Please fix my speeds.
Regards Miss D
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Hi Bianca,
We’re keen to jump in here and lend a hand! Would you be able to get in touch with us directly via iiOnline@iinet.net.au with your details? We can then review this, arrange help to resolve this for you, as well as ascertain what the correct speeds should be.
– Leo
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We have NBN to the premises We pay iinet for basic 12mps , the best speed we ever get is 2.3 mps , we have complained but ignored …