We’re nonetheless technically a few months out from the official rollout of NBN 500 plans in Australia, however Exetel – one among our favorite suppliers right here at TechRadar – has jumped the gun early, introducing a brand-new plan with 500Mbps download speeds.
Out there from in the present day for anybody seeking to supercharge their dwelling web – supplied you’re on a fibre-to-the-premises (FTTP) or hybrid fibre coax (HFC) NBN connection – Exetel is claiming its new One plan is the just one it is best to think about – and it is so assured of this that it is made the radical transfer of ditching all its different NBN plans.
Value is right
Value could be a big contributing issue when deciding on a brand new NBN plan. Store round and you’ll discover that the excessive worth ‘premium’ suppliers are charging for their plans can usually be nabbed from smaller ISPs – with practically an identical service – for so much much less.
The Exetel One plan completely adheres to this philosophy – not solely is it the first shopper NBN 500 plan to come back to market, but it surely’s additionally extremely competitively priced at just AU$80 a month.
To place this into context, the present common month-to-month value of an 100Mbps NBN 100 plan – which is 5x slower than what Exetel’s providing – is just over AU$90. And, going additional, Telstra’s NBN 25 plan, which is 20x slower than Exetel’s One plan, will set you again AU$93 a month. Exponentially extra speed for much less cash is a win in our e-book.
And, whereas there may not be an introductory low cost – one thing we’ve come to anticipate from the finest NBN plans – we’d argue that the cost-per-megabit on supply right here is such distinctive worth that it doesn’t even want one.
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A plan that works for you
Exetel can also be introducing some new perks with this NBN 500 plan, together with an evolution of its Speed Enhance Days function and the capacity to avoid wasting money by quickly ‘downgrading’ the plan when you’re away from dwelling.
On the boosting entrance, should you discover you want quicker speeds for a brief interval (to obtain an enormous new-release online game, for instance,) you may upgrade your NBN 500 plan to realize NBN 1000 speeds – which Exetel says is round 811Mbps typical night speeds – for AU$1 per day. The telco calls this ‘Warp Speed’ and has, for a very long time, supplied a Speed Enhance function throughout its now-discontinued NBN plans that works in a lot the similar means.
The opposite new function, which Exetel is looking Hibernate, lets you drop the speed of your plan right down to the equal of NBN 12 (with 12Mbps most downloads) and save AU$1 off your month-to-month invoice for every day it’s lively.
We are able to see this being significantly helpful should you’re going to be away from dwelling for an prolonged time period, say, while you go on vacation. There is not any restrict on how lengthy you may preserve Hibernate lively for, so should you go away for a month, for instance, you can save as much as AU$31.
Each Warp Speed and Hibernate could be activated and deactivated instantly in the the Exetel app, which is out there for iPhone or Android.
Associates with advantages
One other new function being launched with the Exetel One NBN plan is a friend-referral program. It’s not a brand new idea, however it’s the first time Exetel has adopted one. Via this, should you refer a buddy to Exetel – and that buddy indicators up for NBN – you’ll each obtain AU$1 off your plan every month for so long as you each stay linked.
There’s no restrict to the variety of individuals you may refer and, because it’s stackable, you can theoretically get your Exetel service for free every month – although you may clearly must have a very massive circle of mates.
How does Exetel examine to different NBN suppliers?
We preserve a detailed eye on NBN retail service suppliers (RSPs) right here at TechRadar, and use a mixture of plan pricing and official recorded speed information from the Australian Competitors & Shopper Fee (ACCC) to establish which suppliers are most price your time and cash.
Exetel has been at the high of the listing on many metrics for a while now, because it’s lengthy supplied aggressive pricing and recurrently overdelivers on the subject of typical night obtain speeds.
In actual fact, in the ACCC’s most recent Measuring Broadband report, published in June 2025, Exetel was discovered to realize 104.5% of plan obtain speeds throughout all hours of the day and a powerful 103.7% throughout the busier night hours. Solely Telstra, the nation’s largest (and most costly) supplier, was discovered to ship quicker speeds, and even then, solely by a small margin of lower than 1%.
Primarily based on its efficiency with different plans and what Exetel’s claiming on itself, we’d anticipate this new NBN 500 tier to realize its theoretical most 500Mbps obtain speeds in lots of circumstances – though we’ll want to attend for the ACCC to weigh in (which normally takes not less than a number of months) to have affirmation.
Subsequent steps
NBN Co has large hopes for the NBN 500 tier typically, and regardless that we don’t have any direct opponents to guage it in opposition to, the Exetel One plan does current itself as a very good choice for most properties, promising high-speed downloads for a worth that’s cheaper than many NBN 50 and NBN 100 choices.
If you wish to join, you’ll must be sure you have a FTTP of HFC connection at your premises – to substantiate both means, merely head to the Exetel website to examine your deal with and join. The telco has confirmed that, for now not less than, you will not have the ability to activate the free fibre upgrade to reap the benefits of this plan.
And should you’re already an Exetel buyer with an FTTP or HFC connection, you may simply migrate over to the new One plan through the Exetel app.
