Australia's NBN infrastructure is gradually improving; most of us can enjoy super high speed downloads nowadays, which was unthinkable a decade ago. With this slow evolution comes a fight at the top to see who can offer the cheapest monthly prices for the speediest plans. While most carriers tend to hover around the same price point, a new carrier—an offshoot of the well-established Aussie Broadband—has thrown a bomb in the pond. Or a bunger, I guess.
Launched in July, Buddy is a new budget manifestation of Aussie Broadband, which is the carrier we list as one of our favourites for gaming in our NBN guide. It's a different and cheaper beast for two reasons: Buddy doesn't trade in hardware, so if you don't already have a modem–and of course you already have a modem—then you won't be buying or receiving one from your carrier.
The biggest difference is that there's basically no phone-based human customer support. You can't get on the blower if your connection is down: you'll be speaking to an AI-powered chatbot, whether in-browser or via a smartphone app. Expect to spend some time troubleshooting with this bot before it defers to an actual human being, which will happen if it's at a loss.
Buddy offers an NBN 1000 connection for AU$99 per month; that's not an introductory offer, that's the firm ongoing price, and there are no lock-in contracts. At the moment, the next best connection in terms of price comes from Spintel, who offers the same connection for AU$95 a month, but that only lasts six months before increasing to AU$105.95. (If you're really proactive, you could go with Spintel for six months and then move to Buddy – NBN carrier hopping seems to be a sport among bargain hunters). Overall you'd be looking at AU$1,188 per year for Buddy's NBN 1000 connection, and AU$1,205.70 for Spintel's. It's a saving of AU$17.70 per year overall.
Buddy advertises a typical evening speed of 600Mbps downloads and 41Mbps uploads, which is identical to that offered by its stablemate Aussie Broadband (though some users on famed Aussie discussion board Whirlpool say they get closer to 800Mbps). In other words, it's the same connection, you're just having to speak to an AI bot if you want customer service.
Here are all of Buddy's connection tiers:
Given how competitive the NBN space is, especially at those higher tiers, it'll be interesting to see if Buddy can maintain its dominance in the low-cost field. Similarly, Buddy's AI-first customer service model seems destined to be copied by the competition, which comes with obvious drawbacks. Whatever the case, it's always worth shopping around.
It's also worth remembering that high speed downloads. aren't going to make you connection more stable, or lower your ping, but it will help title updates and game downloads happen quicker.
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