The NBN 500 arms race steps up a notch with a new early contender—and it's less than AU$70 a month

The days of making do with piddling download speeds are increasingly a thing of the past in Australia. As I've reported numerous times of late, NBN is rolling out upgrades to its network in September that will see most NBN 100 plans transforming into NBN 500 plans. Some providers aren't waiting though, and so far we've seen both Exetel and Spintel offer very competitive early NBN 500 plans.

Tangerine has been watching and is not taking it lying down. The provider is now offering NBN 500 for AU$68.90 per month, which is an introductory offer that will last six months. After that the regular fee of AU$88.90 per month will kick in.

Let's break that down. That AU$68.90 monthly bill is definitely the cheapest NBN 500 price so far, but once the introductory offer expires, it will turn into the most expensive monthly bill.

But overall, if you take a full 12 months into account, Tangerine is still the marginal winner. Let's make a ye olde chart about it:

Since none of those plans have contracts, there's no need to stick with any for a full year. If you could be bothered taking advantage of Tangerine's introductory offer for six months, then Spintel's for six months (assuming it sticks around), before settling with the cheapest ongoing cost that Exetel offers, you could stand to save even more: AU$857.40 for a year of NBN 500 sounds good to me.

But keep in mind that things are changing so rapidly in NBN land that maybe some other provider will dash out of the gate next week with something cheaper. In other words, we're currently living in a mini golden age for high-speed internet in Australia, with providers competing aggressively.

Tangerine | NBN 500 | AU$68.90p/m (for 6 months, then AU$88.90p/m)

Tangerine has joined the early NBN 500 club alongside Exetel and Spintel, and not only does it offer the cheapest introductory price, but you'll get to enjoy speeds of up to 700 Mbps until September because, until then, you're actually getting Tangerine's NBN 1000 plan. At time of writing—and things are moving fast—this is the best price on an NBN 500 plan in Australia.

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As always, it's important to note that speeds over NBN 100 need either a fibre to the premises (FTTP) or hybrid fibre coax (HFC) connection. If you're still on fibre to the node (FTTN), you're not going to get higher speeds than 100 Mbps, whether you're on a speedier plan or not.

The good news is that you may be eligible to upgrade to FTTP right now. You can check on the NBN website if that's you.