Exetel has won back the crown of fastest NBN provider with the latest survey of the Australian broadband market conducted by the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC).
As far as typical evening speeds go, the provider managed to outpace every other tracked provider by delivering 103.5 per cent of promised performance during peak hours.
Previous frontrunner Launtel came in second place with 103.3 per cent of promised speeds while Optus managed to narrowly secure third place at 100.1 per cent while Telstra trailed in fourth place with 99.8 per cent of maximum speeds.
While this specific stat doesn’t encapsulate every aspect of what makes a good internet service provider, it’s a valuable one because it’s independently tracked and measures how well a provider like Exetel delivers on the quality of service that it promises its customers.
Exetel NBN plans
If all you need to know is that Exetel is now the fastest NBN provider in Australia according to the ACCC’s data, feel free to check out this shortlist of Exetel NBN plans in the widget below sorted by speed to find one that suits your needs.
However, if speed isn’t your only concern then it might be worth taking a look at how Exetel’s NBN plans compare to the other options when it comes to the asking price. To set the scene, let’s take a look at the widget below for a snapshot of the cheapest NBN 100 plans in our database.
While Exetel does rate pretty highly here, it’s not quite number one when it comes to affordability. If you’re looking for a cheaper NBN 100 alternative, then Southern Phone, Tangerine and Dodo are all worth considering. Depending on your needs, the difference in price may end up being more significant than the difference in speed.
That said, if we raise the stakes to the NBN 250 speed tier, the situation looks quite different. In addition to being the ACCC-approved pick for speed during peak hours, Exetel also emerges as the cheapest option available amongst superfast NBN providers.
Exetel’s NBN 250 Superfast plan is currently the only Superfast NBN plan in our database that costs less than $85 per month. At $83.95 per month, it works out to be less than the price of an NBN 100 connection through either Telstra or Optus right now and while it lags behind Southern Phone and a few others when it comes to evening speeds, the month-to-month savings add up quickly.
This story gets more complicated when it comes to the fastest NBN speed tier, but different from the way you might expect.
As seen in the widget above, $99 can get you either an NBN 500 internet plan from Exetel or an NBN 1000 one from Superloop. While both providers are offering decent discounts on the cost of these plans at the moment, it’s not hugely surprising Superloop comes out ahead here.
After six months with either provider, your monthly bill will rise from $99 to $119. Despite the price parity though, the Superloop Lightspeed NBN 1000 plan offers typical evening speeds that 200Mbps higher than that of its Exetel counterpart.
If you’re looking for a gigabit alternative to the ACCC’s pick for the fastest NBN provider, the Superloop NBN plan above is currently your best bet.
Fergus Halliday is a journalist at WhistleOut, Australia’s phone and internet comparison website