Buddy Telco is a cheaper offshoot of Aussie Broadband, which is worth a look for value-minded internet users.
Buddy Telco NBN plans review
Buddy Telco
Available plans
NBN 25, 50, 100, 1000
Evening download speeds
24, 49, 98, 600Mbps
Stand-out feature
Australian-based support
Cheapest typical price
From $65/mth
4 min read
Buddy Telco NBN value for money
Competitively priced plans on most NBN speed tiers.
Buddy Telco offers a handful of NBN speed tiers that covers the most popular speed tiers, including NBN 25, NBN 50, NBN 100 and NBN 1000 plans. As is the trend in Australia, all Buddy Telco NBN plans come with unlimited data and no upfront fees.
For the NBN 25 plans we track in our comparison engine, Buddy Telco’s is one of the cheapest for typical monthly fees. There may be cheaper initial pricing from the likes of Spintel, Mate and Exetel, but their typical pricing is closer to Buddy Telco. For comparison, here’s a list of popular NBN 25 plans from our database.
It makes sense that Buddy Telco offers an NBN 50 plan, given it’s the most popular speed tier in Australia.
Southern Phone and Kogan Internet have cheaper typical pricing, otherwise Buddy Telco’s NBN 50 plan is the next cheapest for the ones we track in our comparison engine. Here’s a look at popular NBN 50 plans from our database.
Buddy Telco also offers an NBN 100/20 plan, which is the fastest speed tier available for most fixed-line NBN homes.
Moose NBN, Exetel, Spintel and Kogan all offer cheaper typical monthly pricing than the Buddy Telco NBN 100 plan, but Buddy still offers cheaper ongoing fees than most of the other NBN providers we track. Here’s a snapshot of popular NBN 100 plans today.
Buddy Telco skips the NBN 250 speed tier for its final plan, offering an NBN 1000 alternative for homes with Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) or Hybrid Fibre Coaxial (HFC) connections.
With sub-$100 typical monthly pricing, Buddy Telco’s NBN 1000 plan is the cheapest one in our comparison engine, with competitors only temporarily winning out during initial promotional pricing windows. The list below showcases popular NBN 1000 plans today.
Speeds: How fast is Buddy Telco NBN?
Not full throttle but certainly fast enough.
Unsurprisingly, at the time of writing Buddy Telco offered identical typical evening download and upload speeds as its Aussie Broadband parent company for eligible NBN plans. Expect great download and upload speeds with a Buddy Telco NBN plan.
Here’s how Buddy Telco stacks up to some of the fastest NBN 100 plans in our comparison engine.
Buddy Telco NBN features and perks
Effectively a perk-free NBN provider.
As a budget extension of Aussie Broadband, Buddy Telco understandably doesn’t have a lot in the way of plan perks. Sure, there are $0 setup fees and you can bring your own NBN-compatible router, modem-router or mesh WiFi system, but that’s about it.
Buddy Telco doesn’t include a preconfigured networking device or let you pay extra for one, and nor does it offer a home phone service. Users can’t opt out of CGNAT, which is a problem for people who like to host game or Plex media servers, and there isn’t a static IP option for Buddy Telco users. Additionally, plans are only available to NBN fixed-line homes, which means Fixed Wireless and Sky Muster satellite addresses are ineligible to sign up for Buddy Telco NBN plans.
For perkier NBN plans, consider one from Telstra, Exetel, Aussie Broadband, iiNet or Superloop.
Buddy Telco NBN customer support and satisfaction
An okay number of support pathways with good reported customer satisfaction.
If you’re a Buddy Telco customer and want to get in touch with the support team, you have a few options. Buddy Telco has a Facebook page, chat service and email messaging form. Alternatively, there’s self-service online and a usage-monitoring app for Android smartphones and iPhones. Buddy Telco doesn’t have a blog, an active Twitter account, retail stores or phone support. Note that the Perth-based chat team is available Monday to Friday between 11:00am and 7:00pm AEST.
As for customer satisfaction, we check for available user scores on Product Review, Trustpilot, Facebook and Google. While Buddy Telco didn’t have any ratings listed on Facebook or Trustpilot, it did have a 3.3 out of 5 stars on Google and a 4.4 out of 5 stars on Product Review, admittedly from fewer than 10 reviews for both at the time of writing. Still, those are stronger user scores than other NBN providers.
For more support pathways, consider an NBN plan from Optus, Telstra, iiNet, Superloop or Vodafone.
How we review NBN providers
For the 20+ NBN providers we track in our comparison engine, we use a schema to comparatively rank them all in terms of key metrics: price, speed, features, support and user-reported satisfaction. Price and speed are ranked relative to the NBN plan prices and speeds available from the NBN providers in our database.
An NBN provider doesn’t have to be the cheapest, but it should at least have the speed to justify a steeper price. Note that we use typical pricing to better determine overall value, rather than relying on potentially short-lived promotional pricing. For speed expectations, the trend is towards parity between max potential download speeds and an NBN provider’s self-reported typical evening download speeds for NBN 12 (12Mbps), NBN 25 (25Mbps) and NBN 50 (50Mbps) plans. Faster NBN speed tiers tend to offer below-parity speeds, but faster is still preferred.
For features, we favour NBN providers that offer more bang for your buck, while acknowledging that the price-to-speed ratio is the most important. Similarly, the more support pathways an NBN provider offers its customers, the greater its investment in helping which, in turn, offers more options for users. Finally, we scour user-review websites to find satisfaction scores for customers of NBN providers to paint a better picture of their reputations.Buddy Telco NBN frequently asked questions
Aussie Broadband owns Buddy Telco and uses it as a cheaper off-shot brand, similar to what Telstra does with Belong.
Buddy Telco offers NBN services to homes with fixed-line connections, which means that Fixed Wireless and Sky Muster satellite addresses aren’t covered, but those with FTTP, HFC, FTTC, FTTB or FTTN are.
Buddy Telco connects to the NBN fibre footprint via the Aussie Broadband network.
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