On Friday NBN Co launched three new wholesale speed tiers — 100/20, 250/25, and 1,000/50Mbps. This sounds great, but these new fast nbn speeds will only be available for a small portion of users across Australia.
The top two new speed tiers are known as Home Superfast and Home Ultrafast have theoretical speeds of 250/25 and 1000/50, respectively. However, this will vary between households and connection type. Aussies on FTTB, FTTN and FTTC (which is most of us) are unfortunately out of luck for the time being.
It’s worth noting that according to NBN Co, Home Ultrafast will actually have a top range of between 500mbps and 990mbps. Further to that, HFC customers will only hit a maximum of 750mbps down most of the time.
These are some significant caveats for users who can even get plans on these speed tiers. At the moment they will only be available for NBN users on Fibre or HFC.
In a statement regarding the roll out, NBN Co admitted that only 18 per cent of premises that are able to connect to the NBN will be able to get Home Ultrafast. It also stated that only 32 per cent of premises that are NBN ready will be able to get Home Superfast.
A third new speed tier was also announced by NBN which allows for a 100/20 connection. It is also only available for Fibe and HFC customers.
“Our priority is to help deliver high speed broadband to premises across Australia and, as we complete the initial volume build to 11.5 million premises, we are starting to unleash higher speed tiers on a phased basis,” Brad Whitcomb, NBN Co’s Chief Customer Officer, said in a statement.
“Launching the three new higher wholesale speed tiers is the next step in our network evolution and we will continue to upgrade the network to offer higher speed services to more customers over time.”
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Plans for these new speed tiers are already cropping up, with Aussie Broadband confirming that it would begin offering plans on Friday. From today the telco will have a 1000/50 plan with unlimited data for $150 a month, a 250/100 plan for $210 a month and 250/25 plan for $130 a month.
“We think that the plan should achieve off-peak speeds of up to 80-90%, depending on the technology type,” Aussie Broadband managing director Phillip Britt said in a statement.