NBN Co confirmed last week it will raise wholesale prices in July, which means ISPs will inevitably follow suit. Expect a message from your provider some time soon advising of a price increase, or perhaps you've already received it. According to NBN Co, "average wholesale prices" will likely increase by up to AU$1.71 per month, but ISPs will raise their prices by a little (or a lot) more than that.
Indeed, it's already happening: as TechRadar has pointed out, some providers including Exetel and Superloop have gone ahead and raised their plans by up to AU$10 per month ahead of the July hike. For example, if you're on Superloop's popular NBN 100 plan your monthly bill will imminently rise from AU$81 to AU$95 (assuming you're not enjoying any introductory discount at the moment).
But as I pointed out last week, proactive bargain hunters need not overspend for high speed internet. I recently switched from TPG to Spintel: I was paying AU$79.99 for an NBN 50 plan with TPG, which I was advised would soon rise to AU$84.99 a month. I obviously noped out of that situation very quickly. Now I'm spending AU$65 a month for NBN 100 with Spintel. That's an introductory price: It'll rise to AU$81.95 in six months, but even that's still cheaper than TPG's NBN 50 plan.
Lest you think I'm trying to big-up Spintel, let me make this clear: Do I plan to stick with Spintel once the six month introductory offer has expired? Not a bloody chance! It's just too easy to switch.
Price discrepancies are everywhere in NBN land, and there are sometimes good reasons for that. Aussie Broadband-owned Buddy offers extremely competitive prices on NBN 1000, but that's at the cost of any human customer support—it's really for people who have a bit of know-how and can troubleshoot themselves.
On the other hand, it takes basically no savvy at all to hop between internet providers based on their introductory prices, which tend to last six months. All you need to do is cancel with your current provider—they will sometimes try to talk you out of it!—and sign up with the new one, making sure to leave a buffer of a couple of days lest things go wrong. Things shouldn't go wrong though, because the transition just… works. You shouldn't need to change anything, unless there’s specific modem-router settings you need to tweak. I went to sleep one evening with TPG as my provider, and I woke the next morning with Spintel powering my connection.
In other words—and I know I've said this before elsewhere—there is nothing wrong with hopping between ISPs every six months. You stand to save a tonne of money doing so (discounts are usually in the order of AU$15 off the "usual" price, which means a saving of around AU$180 per annum) and all it takes is usually around 15 minutes on the phone.
With that in mind, here are the ISPs with the best introductory discounts going at the moment, across tiers ranging NBN 100 through to NBN 1000. As always, for speeds upwards of 100 Mbps, you'll need a fibre-to-the-premises (FTTP) connection.
For a broader look at NBN providers in Australia, and some tips on what matters for PC gaming, check out our guide to the best Australian NBN plans for gaming.
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