NBN plan promotional pricing explained

Everyone loves a bargain. After all, why pay full price for something when you can nab a discount? When it comes to sniffing out the best NBN plans, there’s a lot of tight competition, particularly for fixed-line NBN plans in metro areas.

The good news is the trend for these types of plans is to offer unlimited data and no contracts, which is a great place to start before even factoring in discounted pricing. Here’s what you need to know about NBN promotional pricing.

For our comparison engine, there are four types of promotional pricing. There’s ongoing promotional pricing, like the discounts offered from Tangerine on its NBN plans without the need for a promo code. Then there are limited-time deals that may be extended or only available for a month.

Finally, there are two types of WhistleOut promotions that are from our sister site and feature on our comparison engine. A WhistleOut Exclusive is a deal that can only be found in our comparison engine, whereas a WhistleOut Special is only one of a few ways to access a particular discount.

There are also NBN plans, bundles and discounts offered to seniors.

Below is a daily updating list of popular NBN plans with deals, representative of all speeds and technology types.

Like no-contract and unlimited-data trends, NBN providers tend to compete on six months of promotional pricing. This means that new customers can sign up to a provider and receive a discount on the typical monthly fee for the first six months, which leads to great first-year savings.

Depending on the provider, there are other offers that pop up every once in a while, like a free first month or a free month or two if you sign up for a contract. Others like Southern Phone exchange a contract for discounted pricing during the entirety of the contract period. Spintel offers credit on some of its plans if you don’t mind a six-month contract. Meanwhile, providers like Mate offer a $10 monthly discount if you bundle your NBN and phone plan.

NBN 12 is ultimately entry-level broadband, and while it’s not a particularly popular speed tier with providers these days, there are still deals if you want bare-bolts broadband. Below is a list of daily updating popular NBN 12 plans with deals across fixed-line NBN, NBN Fixed Wireless and NBN satellite technologies.

NBN 25 is what we consider to be the actual entry-level speed tier for home internet, especially when factoring in the basic needs of the average 2.5 occupants of an Australian household. Below is a daily updating list of popular NBN 25 plans with deals across fixed-line NBN, NBN Fixed Wireless and NBN satellite technologies.

NBN 50 is the most popular speed tier, which makes sense because it’s a great mix of monthly value and decent speeds. Below is a daily updating list of popular NBN 50 plans with deals across fixed-line and Fixed Wireless NBN technologies.

NBN 100 is the fastest speed tier currently available to most Australian metro homes. Below is a daily updating list of popular NBN 100 plans with deals for fixed-line NBN homes.

NBN 250 plans are only available to homes with either Hybrid Fibre Coaxial (HFC) or Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) technologies connecting them to the NBN. If you are one of those homes, check out the daily updating list of NBN 250 plans with deals below.

NBN 1000 plans are the fastest available to metro homes, albeit only select HFC homes or those connected to the NBN via FTTP. While its plans are the most expensive, the fastest NBN speed tier isn’t to be left out when it comes to deals. Check out the daily updating list of NBN 1000 plans with deals below.

If you aren’t one to swear fealty to a single brand and know your way around a calendar reminder, you stand to potentially save hundreds of dollars each year. Thankfully, it’s incredibly easy to switch NBN providers, and downtime while switching tends to be measured in hours rather than days.

Let’s use NBN 50 as a guide for how much you could save in terms of first-year costs by jumping between providers. You’d start with the Spintel NBN Unlimited Plus plan, which costs $54 for the first six months as part of a WhistleOut Exclusive deal. Before it reverts to its typical $64.95 fee on month seven, jump over to the Tangerine XL Speed Boost Unlimited plan, which has a $54.90 monthly fee for the first six months (instead of the typical $69.90 monthly cost).

Tangerine has been offering this $15 monthly discount since February 2021, plus it had a long-running $10 discount for a long time before. While it’s possible Tangerine could drop this NBN promotional pricing at any point, there will likely be other providers in six months competing with a similar-duration discount.

Both these plans have 50Mbps self-reported typical evening download speeds, so you’re not sacrificing download speed to save dollars. If you time it right, your first-year fee would be $653.40, which is a $60.30 saving if you just stuck with Spintel for a full 12 months and $95.40 less than if you started and stuck with Tangerine for the full first year. Together, that’s a combined saving of $155.70, which is just shy of $13 extra in your pocket each month.

After the first year, if providers are still competing on six-month discounts, you can do it all again.