Aussie Broadband doesn't offer introductory discounts on its NBN plans very often, so when it does, it's worth paying attention. It's currently offering its NBN 500 plan for AU$79 for the first six months, which is AU$20 cheaper than the usual AU$99. After six months the latter monthly cost will kick in, but if you're not willing to fork that out you can cancel and switch to another provider.
That promotional discount isn't the cheapest one for NBN 500 plans in Australia. Providers like Dodo and Superloop offer AU$60.99 per month and AU$65 per month respectively for the first six months.
Meanwhile, the most recent (and final) ACCC consumer report on NBN performance, published in June, positions Aussie Broadband as a worthy, even great, but by no means industry leading NBN provider. For example, according to that last report it has an average 9.8ms ping during peak hours, which is higher than Exetel (6.9ms), Superloop (8.4ms) and Telstra (9.7ms) to name just a few. This doesn't mean Aussie Broadband is a high latency provider: it's unlikely even obsessive ping watchers will notice the difference between 6.9ms and 9.7ms. But it's a performance metric all the same.
So is Aussie still a good provider for gaming? One element in Aussie’s favour is that it lets you opt out of CGNAT. CGNAT is an answer to the scarcity of IPv4 addresses which has many users sharing the same IP. For most people this will mean nothing, but if you’re someone who hosts dedicated game (or other) servers from home, opting out of CGNAT may be essential under some conditions. Aussie Broadband also lets you track real time ping speeds from various Australian capital cities, which are refreshed every five minutes.
One other metric, Aussie Broadband is highly regarded for is its customer service. While budget providers tend to rely heavily on webchat or offshoring for problem solving, Aussie Broadband has Australia-based call centres. It also has a strong reputation among gamers: according to Steam's breakdown of the "average download rates for Steam clients on the most popular Internet Service Providers for Australia", Aussie Broadband is third best behind Leaptel and Superloop, though this could just be a reflection of the user base for these providers opting for higher speed plans on average compared to say, Telstra's user base.
While the competition has caught up in terms of ping and download speed reliability—which seems to have coincided with the wider rolling out of FTTP—it might be worth trying them if you're unhappy with your current provider and/or are already paying more than AU$79 a month: there are no lock-in contracts.
