If you want a year's worth of NBN 500 for as little cash and fuss as possible, there's one clear winner at the moment

Every time I write about decent NBN deals I have to point out that the contract-free nature of most plans means you can hop around easily. This comes especially handy if you want to take advantage of a provider's introductory prices, which can usually shave off at least AU$20 from your monthly bill.

These introductory discounts generally last for six months, and if you time things right it means you could be feasting on sub-AU$65 NBN 500 for a long time (or at least, until prices inevitably go up). That's been the case since NBN 500 rolled out late last year, and most providers have relaxed into a fairly safe AU$65 per month bargain ball park.

That's why Dodo's latest offer caught my attention. The bird company is offering NBN 500 for AU$72.99 per month as an introductory price, down from AU$92.99. That doesn't look too great at first glance, but that introductory price is actually for a year rather than the usual six months. If you stick with the provider for a whole year, it actually shakes out to be quite cheap compared to all competition.

Check out this table, where I compare Dodo's 12 month price with the next best ISPs in terms of low price.

There's nothing particularly competitive about Dodo's regular price of AU$92.99, which is on the higher side (unless you count the ridiculously expensive likes of Telstra). I wouldn't stick with the provider once the price increased to normal: I'd simply switch to someone else.

But if you want damn cheap NBN and don't want to shop around every six months for it, this is the best you can get at the moment for a full year of internet connectivity.

When it comes to the specifics of Dodo's offering, the stats are good. Typical evening speeds are 500 Mbps, which means there's no (advertised) penalty for using the internet during peak times. You get an advertised 48 Mbps upload speed too. According to the most recent ACCC NBN broadband performance data, Dodo ranks highly for speed reliability so those promises above check out.

To get further into the weeds, again via the ACCC: Dodo's latency sits around 10ms during busy hours, which is pretty par for the course unless you're exceptionally good like Exetel (7ms) or not so great like iiNet (13ms). This is probably only worth noting if you're a multiplayer gamer.

You also have to actually be eligible to connect to an NBN 500 service. You'll need either a fibre to the premises (FTTP) or hybrid fibre coax (HFC) connection. If you're still on an inferior fibre to the node (FTTN) connection, you're currently limited to a maximum of NBN 100. Which sucks.

But things will hopefully change for you soon, and maybe you're eligible for a free upgrade right now. You can check on the NBN website to find out.