While NBN will be a great improvement for anyone on ADSL 1, many of our customers who have moved from ADSL2 or cable are experience slow internet speeds after the swap over.

This can be because of several reasons.

Firstly, your internet provider buys access to the NBN in bulk. If your provider is not allowing enough bandwidth in your area, you will get slower speeds, particularly in peak times. Speak to your ISP and if you don’t get a satisfactory answer, you may consider changing to another internet provider.

Secondly, your distance to the node will have an impact. The further away you are, the less maximum speed you will have access to. There isn’t anything you can do about this besides change to a 4G connection – more on this later.

Finally, you may consider moving to a higher\faster tier. By default, your ISPs will have you on the lowest tier, which equates to about the same speed as an ADSL2 connection. If you are not too far from the node (say under 700m), you can pay to have more bandwidth. The top tier is normally 100mbps, which is around 4 times faster than ADSL2. This will cost you more each month, so talk to your internet provider.

If all else fails, you can cancel your NBN and move to a 4G connection. Telstra’s 4G network with a Nighthawk router can deliver up to 100mbps in a lot of areas. It’s a good idea to test the internet speed of the 4Gb network by using a smartphone on that network at your house first. Just go to https://www.speedtest.net/ and run a speed test or download the app. The only disadvantage of using a 4G internet connection is the data plans are limited. Check how much data you use each month before considering this option.

It’s also interesting to note that 5G is just around the corner. Testing has shown this will deliver between 1,000-10,000mpbs. 10-100 times faster than the best NBN. The rollout of 5G networks in Australia is still a few years away, but it could be the real revolution that the NBN promised us and fail to deliver.