Exetel NBN user review

Like most Aussies, I’m a bit lazy when it comes to shifting NBN providers. When NBN was first activated in my area, I went with Superloop because it was a rare provider offering 100/40 plans at the time, plus competitive pricing and low latency. But as my download speeds deteriorated and I was frustrated with a lack of resolution from Superloop’s tech support, I shifted to the NBN provider with the best reputation for customer support: Aussie Broadband.

Unfortunately, I didn’t have the best support experiences with Aussie Broadband, though I know plenty of others who have had great interactions. So I was in the market for a new NBN provider, and as the person responsible for the monthly best NBN plan picks, Exetel was at the top of my short list of replacement providers because of its low prices, lower latency and fast self-reported typical evening speeds.

Before I get into the nitty-gritty of my three-month Exetel user review, have a look at the most popular NBN plans in our comparison engine today.

The rest of my replacement NBN providers’ shortlist basically included those that still offer 100/40 plans, given that’s what I had with Superloop and Aussie Broadband. In retrospect, it really shouldn’t have. Up to 40Mbps uploads is nice in theory but it’s commonly an extra $10 monthly fee for extra upload bandwidth that most NBN users won’t use, so I opted for Exetel’s cheaper NBN 100/20 plan.

It helps that Exetel has a long-running history of offering six months of promotional pricing for its plans, which helps to keep first-year costs down. My apartment is connected via Fibre-to-the-Curb (FTTC), which means I could have also considered Exetel’s NBN 25 and NBN 50 plans, but as an impatient gamer in an apartment where two people work from home, the extra bandwidth comes in handy. In fairness, if I could easily get Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP)—my building is eligible for an upgrade but needs strata sign-off—I’d be on an NBN 1000 plan.

That’s not a speed tier that Exetel offers, though they do offer NBN 250 plans for those in Hybrid Fibre Coaxial (HFC) or FTTP homes. Regardless, I am very happy with the promotional fees and the prospect of typical pricing for my Exetel NBN 100/20 plan.

Check out the full list of Exetel NBN plans below.

As is the trend these days, signing up for an Exetel NBN plan is a very straightforward process. I didn’t let Aussie Broadband know I was shifting providers, and I just followed the prompts on the Exetel website to sign up for my plan. So far, so good.

What’s less good is the 9.5-point-font heads up at the bottom of the Exetel NBN plans page informing me that there are “pro-rata charges for [a] 30-day cancellation notice period”. I can’t speak for every NBN provider, but shifting from Superloop to Aussie and then Aussie to Exetel didn’t have any notification period when I ghosted them.

The other thing I’m not a fan of is Exetel NBN plans are effectively prepaid, which wasn’t the case with Superloop or Aussie Broadband. And then there was a clerical error. One of the things I missed in the fine print was a surcharge for using a card instead of a direct debit. When I noticed the extra fee on my first Exetel invoice, I shifted to direct debit, then a week later pre-emptively contacted Exetel support to clarify that I wouldn’t be charged the fee for a new invoice.

I was assured that the fee wouldn’t be charged and—surprise, surprise—it was. I can appreciate that an automated invoicing system can’t charge a new fee if it hasn’t been manually amended—and I wasn’t issued with an updated invoice, so I expected this initial outcome—but it was still a pain that I had to chase Exetel again to get a credit on the erroneous fee.

The bigger concern was the waiting time. I’m glad I didn’t break up with Aussie Broadband before signing up for Exetel because I would’ve been without internet for a couple of days. The switch from Superloop to Aussie Broadband took minutes. In fairness, the swap happened in the wee hours of the morning, and I woke up to my Synology RT6600ax already connected to the new Exetel plan, which I wasn’t expecting.

I did a speed test on my Aussie Broadband 100/40 plan just before the switch, which gave me 92.12Mbps download speeds, 38.17Mbps uploads and 5ms latency with an Ethernet-connected PC. The Exetel 100/20 speed tests were identical for latency, negligibly slower for uploads (18.98Mbps vs ~19.08Mbps) but faster for download speeds at 99.5Mbps.

That was an excellent start to proceedings. In fairness, since then my download speeds have slowed somewhat. Because I handle router, modem-router and mesh WiFi reviews for Reviews.org, I do speed tests multiple times per month. Download speeds have since dropped to the low 90s and, more recently, below 90Mbps at night. I suspect that might be because of some back-end tweaks, but that’s related to the tech support journey in the next section.

With the right router, modem-router or mesh WiFi system, there are zero issues with Exetel for everyday internet. I’ve had no dropouts, and the fact that Exetel consistently scores the best results for lowest latency in ACCC testing definitely makes for a seamless experience for gaming, voice and video calls. Those latter two are particularly important given my partner and I both work from home (and she has a lot of video meetings).

It’s a similar story with streaming and consistent download speeds. Unrestricted Steam downloads typically max out all available bandwidth speed, while streaming Twitch, YouTube, Stan and other services across multiple devices is a smooth experience without buffering issues. As long as the available download and upload aren’t maxed out, Exetel is great for everyday internet use cases. Well, that and you need to be using a reliable router.

I wouldn’t normally lump a provider’s networking gear and support under the same heading, but I had such a painful experience with the ZTE H1600 that I got a good taste of Exetel tech support. First impressions of the H1600 were actually great: a compact unit at a budget price with some great results in my initial speed tests. Then things fell apart in everyday testing.

While WiFi connectivity was consistent, certain apps wouldn’t load, while others only had partial functionality. Online gaming and voice calls with an Ethernet-connected PC were effectively unusable, with massive lag spikes and call dropouts.

So I needed some tech support, especially when I isolated the issues to the H1600. Admittedly, the Exetel ‘contact us’ page is a bit confusing. On one hand, it has wait times, which is great, but on the other it says that a call-back service and live chat are both ‘coming soon’, despite a chat bubble. Live chat was reportedly set to go live on 30 September 2024.

Online chat is my preference but I stuck with email initially and was later asked to call, which turned out to be unnecessary. There was an automated reply that told me I might have to wait up to 48 hours for an email reply. But after multiple email back-and-forths, replies typically didn’t take more than a couple of hours, which is great. What’s less great is that the technicians would action those changes before replying, which led to a couple of instances of downtime during business hours as my NBN NTD and H1600 modem-router were reset.

The main perk of buying a preconfigured networking device from an NBN provider like Exetel is it makes it easier for your provider to troubleshoot, including remote access. There were some initial changes that didn’t fix the ZTE WiFi woes, but I eventually got a reply from a technician who made the necessary tweaks to fix the issues. But that didn’t solve the latency problem and, while I can’t yet prove it, I suspect the tweaks to fix the WiFi issues also slowed my downloads.

Given that both the WiFi and latency issues were clearly caused by the H1600, I just shifted back to my RT6600ax and didn’t have to deal with those issues anymore. When I’m in a quieter week, I’ll likely chase Exetel again to fix the latency issues with the H1600—I even suspect it might be a hardware fault—but that’s more out of curiosity than necessity. Still, my experience with Exetel tech support was a mostly positive affair and one that I wouldn’t hesitate to use again (next time via live chat).

It hasn’t exactly been a smooth-sailing experience with Exetel but, in fairness, nor has it been consistently negative enough that I’m counting down the promo days to get rid of them. The sign-up process was painless, though the waiting time to get connected was longer than expected. Internet uptime and speeds have been great, except when I used the preconfigured ZTE H1600 modem-router that I bought with my NBN 100 plan.

Those issues did lead to an organic way of testing Exetel’s tech support, though, which is a feature I don’t regularly use with NBN providers except when I’m asking them to fix a fault outside my home. With live-chat tech support set to go live shortly after submitting this review, I’m still left with a mostly positive user experience that matters where it counts: a reliable connection with solid speeds at an affordable price.