Fuzenet (Meriton) internet review: Not the best option for your apartment

Fuzenet is not exactly a household internet name, unless of course you’re one of the thousands of people who live in a Meriton owned or managed apartment across Australia.

The telco has been around since 2008 and has a significant partnership with Meriton, making it the default internet provider across all of its buildings in Australia.

When you move into a Meriton building,  the building manager will often tell you that they only know about Fuzenet, and that there aren’t any other options for you to choose from.

The problem with this is that Fuzenet’s plans are by no means the cheapest on the market, and customers across the internet widely express displeasure with speeds and customer service. In fact, the ACMA even stung Fuzenet in 2018 for not properly handling customer complaints. There are also nasty clauses in its terms of service which means that customers remove their rights to dispute poor service issues.

Despite what your building manager may say, in most Meriton buildings, you will be able to connect to another NBN provider or LBNCo re-seller. Of these, we recommend either Exetel or TPG.

While the NBN is being rolled out across a bunch of newer Meriton properties in Australia, most others are serviced by another fibre wholesaler called LBNCo. LBNCo is essentially a smaller, private version of the NBN and rolls out fibre-optics internet across the country for internet providers to resell. It actually owns Fuzenet, but seems to be better at being a wholesaler than a retail provider.

It sells plans for up to 100Mbps, and also offers plans at 12Mbps and 25Mbps. We would recommend the 100Mbps plan for most people, and the 25Mbps plan if it’s just one person living in the apartment.

Exetel’s unlimited fibre plans for LBNCo start at $59.90 a month for 12Mbps, $69.99 for 25Mbps and $79.99 for 100Mbps. These are all about $10 a month cheaper than Fuzenet’s plans, and you also save the $49 a month activation fee that Fuzenet charges if you sign up for 12 months.

Exetel’s plans also come with the choice of either month-to-month with no lock in contracts, or you can sign up for 12-months and get a free modem thrown in, too.

There are also a handful of Meriton apartment buildings that are connected to TPG’s fibre to the basement network too, which offer up to 100Mbps speeds for less than the NBN. iiNet also sells these plans, too - so you can take a look at those and see which is best for you.

If you’re in one of the lucky Meriton buildings with NBN, this opens up your options a lot more, and in most cases opens you up to over 100 different NBN providers to choose from over Fuzenet.

No plan is perfect for everyone, so we’re taking a look at it based on a combination of price and speed results from the ACCC to award TPG as our best option here.

TPG in the ACCC’s most recent consumer speed testing was found to have the most consistently fast speeds, and closest to its plans’ speed promises of 50Mbps or 100Mbps.

While their plans aren’t quite the cheapest, they’re close to it, and offer a more reliable speed trade-off versus its competitors that cost less.

Like most NBN providers, with TPG, you’re able to choose between month-to-month with no lock in contract, or sign yourself up for 12 months or longer and get a free modem thrown in, too.

If you need lots of data and want to pay as little as possible for it, Tangerine often has the cheapest deals in the NBN market. Although with that, their speeds aren’t quite as consistent as competitors, but you’ll still be able to stream Netflix in HD while watching dinner each night.

The one thing to be aware of with Tangerine’s prices is that these are promotion deals and they go up after 6 months, so make sure you get in touch with the Tangerine team before your 6 months is up to find the best plan for you.

If you can’t connect to any of the above, you still have hope with wireless broadband, as long as you have decent mobile coverage in your apartment.

In this case, Optus generally has the best value wireless broadband plans, and will see you hit around 40Mbps in download speeds. Prices start at around $50 for 100GB, but most households will want more than that, in which case you pay about $85 for 500GB.

There are lots of stories on forums and social media about building managers telling new tenants that Fuzenet is their only option for internet in the building, where this is simply not true.

While you can still sign up for Fuzenet and have a fine experience, you should still shop around for better deals on the market, as from our experience and research, Fuzenet’s plans aren’t usually the cheapest option on either the NBN or LBNCo connections.

What connection and options you have to you will vary between apartment buildings based on the local technology available.

If you put your address in below, we can do all the work for you and find other potential internet providers at your Meriton apartment.

If you've either got a great personalised Fuzenet plan or are already on Fuzenet, it's worth talking about its customer service, which as we mentioned above, got called out by ACMA in 2018 for being subpar and not resolving customer issues.

Since then, Fuzenet has tried to pick up the ball a little bit and now offers an online chat on its website for customers to reach out to, and also extended its call centre hours to customers. However, the exact hours are still a little vague on its website.

You can reach Fuzenet via the following:

• Phone Number - 1300 881 917
• Email - support@fuzenet.net.au
• Online chat