NBN switching - tired of Telstra, Optus and Vodafone?

NBN switching is a hot topic as tens of thousands of NBN Broadband users react to email and other outages suffered by the primary Telcos over the past few weeks.

We all know that these three companies have among the worst customer service. Read TIO Complaints report Q4/2024 – the usual suspects let you down, and TIO Complaints report Q3/2024 – Why do you bother with Telstra, Optus, Vodafone or TPG?

But it is not just the Big Guys, but hundreds of thousands of users who churn to another NBN reseller each year due to poor service. Of course, some do it to take advantage of special limited pricing offers, but it shows how easy NBN switching is.

Telstra

Telstra rated 1.3 stars on 3,000+ Trustpilot reviews. Its NBN service scored 1-star, which was the lowest rating allowed.

If I say what I really think, I will surely go to jail.

Picture THE most ridiculous customer service experience possible- I promise you it is FAR worse than that. My current case has been going on for a YEAR (and that’s just ‘this’ time)! I cannot count the days, weeks, and months of my life so far lost while incompetent Telstra employees take me on another bullshit ride around this same garden of their nonsense. This is a game I do not wish to play anymore- I wish to exit this derelict theme park.

Run away

Run away. Unless this is your Only choice…run. They are a shit company. They will not follow through with what they say. Each year, they get a bit worse. Contact staff must be in India, and just cut and paste replies. You will take time off work for the technical guys, who will cancel appointments time and time again. Save yourself some grief, go with the smaller telcos. And Telstra is the dearest.

Optus

Optus rated 1.2 stars from 2000+ Trustpilot reviews

Appalling Customer Service

I have had Optus home NBN and phone plan since 2017. I needed to contact them due to poor internet speeds and dropouts, and to check new options. Giving them the account number and email address they send it to monthly is not enough to recognise me!!! 50 minutes in, and still no resolution. What has happened to customer service in this country? They are happy to take the money, but heaven forbid you need help.

Disgusting. Incompetent. Anti-Customer

Optus is fine when it works, but their customer service team cannot understand or resolve the issue when you run into basic errors. You will be given phone numbers that don’t work, you will be told you will receive a call that won’t come and finally when you are speaking to a team member they will pass you around like a hot potato as none of them have a god damned clue what they are doing. When moving house, Optus could not troubleshoot and resolve an issue as minor as a damaged Uni-D1 port. I called Aussie Broadband, explained the situation and had great internet working within an hour. I have been trying to cancel my Optus NBN service for FOUR days, and they are STILL failing to do so. Pure incompetence and borderline illegal practices.

Vodafone (TPG)

Vodafone rated 1.4 from nearly 1000 Trustpilot reviews

Has to be the worst communication…

Fail 1: I needed a simple plug-and-go internet router. Vodafone sent a fibre hub, which required a fibre box connection I didn’t have, even though I explained to the sales team.
Fail 2: It took several hours of calls to arrange a router and the return of the wrong one.
Fail 3: I had to return the units to the nearest Vodafone shop and spent at least 1 hour and 15 minutes in the store trying to explain that I was instructed to return the items to them. They still had to call a support line for advice—45 minutes while I waited.
Fail 4: I had had enough and cancelled the service.

AVOID AT ALL COST

Only giving a one because I can’t give them a 0. Incompetent and rude, they fraudulently pressure you into a free trial for their internet service, then, before you have even received the modem, they will charge you for it. I cancelled the free trial as they told me not a cent would come out of my account before that, and 2 days later, I have a bill for it and have just spent a month and a half trying to sort it out. They offer no support or reasonable compensation. Rude customer service will talk over you and not let you speak. For your good, AVOID AT ALL COST!!!

Why do the main Telcos seem to get it wrong?

To be fair, they have far more NBN customers and will argue that numerically, the ratings don’t count. because customers only resort to venting after they have less-than-expected results.

We say it is endemic in their systems, which cater to enterprise, corporate, and government at the little guy’s expense. They know most customers are rusted-on, and churn will be small.

What is the NBN anyway?

NBN is a river. All ISPs use that river, but some, like Telstra, build all manner of bridges, off-ramps, and on-ramps to avoid paying NBN for the use of the river. For example, I live on the Central Coast, and with Telstra, I had 13 Tracert hops, frequent loss packets, and an 80ms delay to reach Sydney—bloody ridiculous!!!

Each hop saves them money, but increases latency and missed packets. A hop refers to the individual steps or segments of a network packet’s route to its destination.

In fact, Telstra had to refund me three years of NBN and was fined by the TIO for its abysmal service, so I will never use it.

I now use Aussie Broadband, which has four hops to Sydney and 45ms. It is far more reliable and has a local Australian call centre with people who want to help. They fixed the Telstra problem in seconds!

NBN Switching is easy

Email

If you switch from Telstra (and we assume you will), you may be unable to keep your Bigpond.com email address unless you retain one Telstra service/account. Rumours are that Bigpond will be phased out and moved to Telstra Mail.

Optus and Vodafone no longer offer email accounts.

In any case, you are better off setting up a Gmail, Outlook, or Apple iCloud mail account. None are likely to cancel services like TGP did last year.

FTTN and Landline users

Telstra landlines use proprietary CODECS and can only be accessed using a Telstra Gen 2 or 3 modem/router. Read Telstra Smart Modem 3 – not all that smart or fast. You can transfer your phone number to a new ISP, which may take weeks! You will need a new modem/router with Voice Ports, which all support FTTP and FTTN VDSL.

FTTP and no landline

Read Crappy NBN Modem – here are a few better ones (2025 update network guide)

In any case we strongly recommend that you don’t take the ISPs cheap crappy router and look at your needs for whole-of-home coverage with a Wi-Fi 6E AXE or 7 BE mesh router.

What speed do you need?

There are hundreds of NBN resellers, and frankly, they all use the same ‘river’. In theory, that means all should be equal when selling NBN tiers but they are not. (Download/Upload Mbps)

2 (2/1 used for home landline phone only – not all providers sell this)
12 (12/1)
25 (25/10)
50 (50/20)
75 (75/20) – the fallback if FTTN won’t handle 100/20
100 (100/20 or 100/40) – Maximum on FTTN services and some HFC
250 (250/25 or 250/100)
500 (500/200)
1000 (1000/400)

As a guide, a streaming HD or FHD SDR movie needs 15-25Mbps (you may experience buffering), and a 4K HDR movie needs 50Mbps.

Most FTTP routers have a 1Gbps (1000Mbps) Ethernet WAN interface, which handles all the NBN Tiers above. Some have 2.5 and even 10Gbps, but these won’t be needed until NBN offers speeds above 1000Mbps.

Most are very happy at 50/20, but you cover all bases with the next hop to 100/20. Some ISPs insist on 100/20 if you have FTTP.

How do you select a new NBN provider?

The consensus among our readers is that Aussie Broadband is Australia’s best NBN provider. They have an Australian call centre with locals who want to help you. Since moving to Aussie BB, I can speak highly enough.

Aussie Broadband rates 2.4 Trustpilot stars, based on only 191 reviews. I can only say that anytime I have needed to contact them, it was quick to connect with a local, and the matter was resolved (I have mainly had FTTN issues that are beyond Aussie’s purview, but at least they added the error correction needed for me to get reasonable reliability). Read NBN FTTN users – no responsibility for speed or reliability.

Aussie also own Buddy Telco, which uses all of Aussie’s backend but has pure online live chat support.

Prices exclude Router and landline if required as a 7/5/25.

	Buddy	Aussie
25/10	$65 ($53 for the first six months)	$79
50/20	$75 ($63 for the first six months)	$89
75/20		$92
100/20	$85 100/20 ($73 for first six months)	$95
100/40		$105
250/25		$119
250/100		$139
500/200		$169
1000/50	$99	$129
1000/400		$199

The HUGE mistake is that people compare prices instead of quality and peace of mind. Remember Telstra 14 hops versus Aussies four.

Our advice:

Deal with a real NBN CSP with its billing infrastructure and a live onshore help desk.
It should be their prime business, not an adjunct to sales. For example, Kogan resells Vodafone but has no support infrastructure.
Avoid the masses of virtual providers that resell a white-label service from another provider.
Avoid providers that bundle electricity or other utilities
Look up Trustpilot AU to gauge users’ feedback. Remember that it’s the squeaky wheel syndrome (vocal minority).

Make sure you are not still in a contract

Telstra may offer month-to-month plans, but the Gen 2 or 3 modem may be on a 3-year plan that requires you to pay out for a barely adequate gateway. You may also have useless Telstra range extenders. Check your bill and, if necessary, contact them.

Don’t cancel your existing provider – yet

After you have decided on a provider, they will manage the changeover with no intervention needed from you. Once that is running, call your old provider and cancel the service. If it’s like me, it took hours to get through to Telstra and explain to a person with an incomprehensible, thick accent that I wanted to divorce Telstra. Telstra still sent bills for many months, and I emailed the incident number back. Eventually, I pulled the journalist card, and Telstra’s friendly PR people fixed it.

NBN FTTP (Fibre to the Premises) upgrades

NBN is gradually replacing FTTN with FTTP. You can check coverage here. Residential users get the upgrade free, which involves running fibre through the same conduit as their old Telstra copper FTTN cable. If that is not possible, there may be a charge on rare occasions.

If Fibre or HFC is not installed already, strata complexes, such as units, apartments, high-rises, and some townhouses (mainly on a group title), must contract with NBN and pay for fibre to be installed. The Catch-22 is that all owners must agree to the upgrade, and costs can range from $300 per lot to several thousand dollars. NBN will send a team to provide a design and quote for your consideration. It can take a few months to see any action (we paid in January, and while the work was completed two weeks ago, the ports won’t be activated until 30 May!).

All I can say is that FTTN sucks and it is worth it at almost any cost to go to FTTP.

What about 4/5G internet?

NBN does not provide this, and it is a while-labelled Telco product. You need a 4/5G modem/router (takes a SIM or eSIM), and most of the time, you will need to connect a mesh router system to cover the whole of your home.

You can expect speeds (this is a general observation).

4G from 20-100Mbps download and up to 15Mbps upload
5G from 20-150Mbps download and 50Mbps upload
And abysmal speeds in 1 and 2-bar areas.

My experience is not great because it depends on the strength of the mobile data signal. You can check this using Network Cell Info Lite for Android only. If you can’t get a signal in the green area, forget 4/5G internet.

Pro: Good for renters

Con: Poor home coverage and subject to mobile data contention ratios (how many people are using the service on your local tower).

Starlink or satellite

Starlink is now an option for all Australians, and while it’s a little more expensive, it can be the perfect answer. It also has mobile options for RVs and boats.

Read Starlink – power for good or Musk’s evil political football.

The only issue is where to mount the satellite dish so that it has a clear view of the sky 24/7.

Sage advice: Your first choice is NBN FTTP via Fibre or HFC, and your second choice is Starlink over FTTN.

How hard is it to DIY install?

It depends on whether you are moderately tech-savvy or have a 12-year-old who is.

Plugging in a router to NBN is simple, and NBN resellers should have good online instructions. You download the app, plug in the modem/router, give it an SSID and password, and that is essentially it.

However, that will only transmit Wi-Fi 2.4/5GHz signals in a circle 10/20 metres in diameter around the router. Most homes are larger, longer, or multi-story, so you won’t get full coverage.

That is where you need to do some research.

Read

CyberShack’s view: NBN Switching is easy

If you have read this far, there are two main messages:

NBN Switching is as simple as selecting a new provider. In most cases, the cutover is instant, and you can keep your existing modem for now.,

Don’t shop on price, but on service. If you have even one issue, NBN switching is very easy.

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NBN switching – tired of Telstra, Optus and Vodafone?