What are NBN evening speeds?

No matter what type of internet connection you’re using, NBN, home wireless broadband or something else, there are certain factors that can impact your overall speeds. Some of those factors are in the home—things like wireless interference, number of devices competing for limited bandwidth, or even in-home wiring—while others are outside.

One of those outside-the-home factors that has the potential to greatly impact your overall internet speed is during the internet’s busy evening period. Before we dive into NBN evening speeds, let’s take a look at this busy period first.

The internet’s busy evening period happens nightly between 7.00pm and 11.00pm, on weekdays and weekends. This is the time when most people are at home and online, whether they’re uploading pictures, playing games, streaming content or doing any number of other online activities. More people online means there’s a greater chance that your overall internet speed—downloads, uploads and latency—will be impacted by this surge of online activity from other internet users in your area.

NBN evening speeds are the maximum download speeds you can expect to achieve on your home NBN internet connection. These speeds may be identical to the maximum potential speed of the NBN plan you’re signed up to, or they may be slower. Either way, the ACCC requires NBN fixed-line providers to self-report typical evening download speeds you can expect to achieve during the internet’s busy evening period.

All things being equal, NBN evening speeds are determined by three key external factors: the NBN technology type used to connect your home, the NBN plan you’ve signed up for and your NBN provider.

The NBN plan you’ve signed up to will ultimately determine the maximum potential download speed you can reach, and it’s determined by the number in the name:

• NBN 12 (NBN Basic I): up to 12Mbps download
• NBN 25 (NBN Basic II): up to 25MBps download
• NBN 50 (NBN Standard): up to 50Mbps download
• NBN 100 (NBN Fast): up to 100Mbps download
• NBN 250 (NBN Superfast): up to 250Mbps download
• NBN 1000 (NBN Ultrafast): up to 1000Mbps download

Those first four NBN plan speeds are offered to most homes in metro areas, with NBN 250 and NBN 1000 available to select Hybrid Fibre Coaxial (HFC) and all Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) homes.

Because the ACCC requires providers to self-report their typical evening download speeds for metro areas, it’s easier to see how close NBN evening speeds come to max potential speeds. The trend of late has been towards providers offering faster and faster NBN evening speeds, which you’ll see in the lists below.

There aren’t many plans offered for the lowest NBN speed tier, but the good news is the four main plans offer parity between max potential download speed and typical evening speed (12Mbps).

It’s a similar story for NBN 25 speed tier, with the 10 fastest providers in our comparison engine offering 25Mbps self-reported typical evening download speeds.

Not to be left out, the 10 fastest NBN 50 providers in our comparison engine also offer 50Mbps parity between max potential plan speed and NBN evening speeds.

For NBN 100 and faster, things open up a bit more with a handful of providers self-reporting 100Mbps evening speeds while the others clock in at over 92Mbps or above.

None of the providers that offer NBN 250 plans guarantee typical evening download speeds of 250Mbps, but Aussie Broadband and Superloop come close.

What you may notice about the NBN 1000 plans below is that there’s a number that offer either 250Mbps or 200Mbps self-reported typical evening speeds, but the top three are noticeably faster.

If your home is in a regional or rural area, you may be connected to the NBN via Fixed Wireless, which has different max speed expectations:

• Fixed Wireless Basic: up to 11Mbps download
• Fixed Wireless Standard: up to 23Mbps download
• Fixed Wireless Plus: up to 75Mbps download

Because overall speeds on Fixed Wireless technology are less reliable than fixed-line alternatives, NBN evening speeds may drop as low as 6Mbps. Providers aren’t required to self-report typical evening download speeds.

Below is a daily updating list of the most popular Fixed Wireless NBN plans with unlimited data in our comparison engine.

It’s a similar story for NBN satellite, which has either a max download speed of 12Mbps or 25Mbps, depending on the plan you’re signed up for. Below is a daily updating list of the most popular NBN satellite plans in our comparison engine.

While there’s no straightforward way to say which provider is the fastest, mostly because providers tend to offer varying download speeds across plan types/speed tiers, there are providers that consistently offer faster self-reported typical evening download speeds.

The table below gives you an idea of the average download speeds of the provider plans we track in our comparison engine compared to the maximum potential download speed for each NBN speed tier. Use this as a guide for determining whether providers are offering plan speeds above or below the average.

And the table below shows the self-reported typical evening speeds for all of the providers that we track in our comparison engine.

Reliably tracking upload speeds throughout the day let alone during the busy evening period is tricky because we live in an internet world that favours download over upload. In fairness, download speed is generally more important than upload speed for most online tasks, which is likely why there’s such a divide between upload speeds and download speeds in NBN plans.

Ultimately, providers aren’t required to self-report expected upload speeds for any of their plans. While that’s frustrating for those who care about upload speeds, the table below uses the ACCC upload speed percentages from the December 2022 Measuring Broadband Australia report to give you an idea of the upload speeds you can expect during the busy evening period from 10 popular providers.