With many of us now working from home as a result of COVID-19, our personal internet has become more important than ever. If your chosen connection is geared toward a bit of Netflix and Facebook, there’s a chance your NBN plan might not be quite up to scratch when it comes to working from home. You may need to upgrade your plan for the sake of better download or upload speed.
At the same time, it’s understandable that you wouldn’t want this change to be permanent. Why sign an extended contract for something you only need for a month or two? Well, hopefully.
Thankfully there are now plenty of high-speed contract-free NBN plans that let you bail whenever, or alternatively, change the speed your plan is configured on once per month. Some are cheaper than others, but if you need to improve your internet to work from home, hopefully your employer can cover the cost. Or at least the difference, because you shouldn’t be put out of your own pocket if you need a better connection to reliably continue to do your job.
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With this is mind, we’re going to look at your options for contract-free NBN 100 plans with unlimited.
Most ISPs will offer to sell you a modem, but some force you to buy a model they range when you’re signing up to a new plan. For the sake of simplicity, we’re only comparing NBN plans where a modem purchase is optional, and where you won’t be hit with any setup or early exit fees.
Unlimited NBN 100 plans with no-contract
Tangerine is one of the cheapest providers around when it comes to NBN 100 plans: $74.90 per month gets you an unlimited data NBN 100 / 20 plan. After your first six months are up, you’ll pay $89.90 per month, but that shouldn’t matter too much if your plan swap is just a temporary solution.
A standard NBN 100 plan ” or an NBN 100 / 40 plan ” has upload speeds of 40Mbps. NBN 100 / 20 plans halve this to 20Mbps, which is worth keeping in mind if you job would require you to potentially upload large files when work remotely.
Kogan Internet has its own discount going right now: you’ll pay $78.90 per month for your first six months, and $88.90 per month thereafter. Once again, this is an NBN 100 / 20 plan.
You might also want to consider a premium provider like Aussie Broadband or Superloop. The pair report some of the fastest peak hour speeds around, clocking in at 86Mbps and 90Mbps, respectively. More reliable peak hours connectivity could useful, given it’s likely the definition of “peak hours” will expand as more of us begin to work from home.
Aussie Broadband and Superloop both also publish capacity graphs for each individual NBN Point of Interconnect, which makes it easy to see how much bandwidth the providers have in your area, and how much is being used.
Aussie Broadband’s NBN 100 / 20 plan sells for $89 per month, while Superloop’s goes for $89.95 per month. Alternatively, if you faster upload speeds because your job requires them, here are Superloop’s and Aussie Broadband’s NBN 100 /40 plans.
And if you’re super serious about working from home, Aussie Broadband has a no-contract NBN 250 plan priced at $169 per month. Upload speeds on NBN 250 plans are limited to a maximum of 25Mbps, which makes them a little faster than NBN 100 / 20 plans, but slower than what you’d get on an NBN 100 / 40 plan.
This plan is only available to those with an FTTP NBN connection, however.
Alex Choros is Managing Editor at WhistleOut, Australia’s phone and internet comparison website.