Media Release: NBN launches new ultra-fast broadband speeds

The Morrison Government welcomes three new high speed residential plans on the National Broadband Network (NBN), which from today are available to retail service providers (RSPs) in response to increasing customer demand for higher speeds.

The new wholesale bundles include Home Fast offering speeds of up to 100/20Mbps, Home Superfast providing up to 250/25Mbps speeds and Home Ultrafast with a download range up to 500-1000Mbps and 50Mbps upload.

Minister for Communications, Cyber Safety and the Arts, the Hon Paul Fletcher MP, said the launch of ultra-fast services demonstrates the network’s upgrade potential and NBN Co’s focus on innovation and lifting digital capability.

“The launch of these plans is evidence of the NBN’s substantial capacity and flexibility to deliver services to meet the current and future needs of its users,” said Minister Fletcher.

“The new Home Fast plan provides speeds of up to 100/20Mbps and is available across all NBN fixed line technologies. It provides an alternative to the existing 100/40Mbps plan at a lower wholesale cost. This means around 10 million homes currently able to connect to the fixed line network will be able to access download speeds of up to 100Mbps more affordably.”

These higher speed plans have been developed in consultation with RSPs and provide competitive price points for RSPs to market services to customers. They are intended to support households with heavy data download demands, including gamers, large families and homes that have five or more people who often use home broadband simultaneously. 

The Home Superfast and Home Ultrafast products will be initially made available to the Fibre to the Premises (FTTP) footprint and portions of the Hybrid Fibre Coaxial (HFC) network. NBN Co is progressively upgrading parts of the network so that more Australians are able to access these higher speed tiers. 

This comes as research from NBN Co demonstrates an increasing appetite for higher speeds among Australians with 23 per cent of surveyed customers having upgraded to higher speed internet plans within the last 12 months and 24 per cent indicating plans to upgrade in the coming 12 months.

“While for many Australians the existing speed tiers will be sufficient at this time, it is important that NBN Co continues to evolve its products through new speed tiers in order to stay ahead of changing user demands,” Minister Fletcher said.

“NBN Co is committed to supporting the broadband demands of Australians, as evidenced by their swift and effective response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

“Over the last few months, the NBN has been the digital backbone of productivity, social cohesion and connectivity with more Australians than ever before relying on the NBN to connect, work and learn from home. NBN Co successfully managed this increased traffic by working constructively with the industry and its customers to help them adapt to the changing environment.”

NBN Co’s high-speed tier plans, available from today, are part of the company’s two-year roadmap which is delivering RSPs with products that are more affordable and have greater data capacity.

For more information on the new plans visit NBN Co’s website: www.nbnco.com.au