I've been paying way too much for NBN—Spintel is offering NBN 250 for just AU$80 a month, which is less than what I'm paying for a much slower connection (2025)

Earlier this year my internet provider jacked up the monthly cost of my NBN 50 plan to AU$85 a month. It came as a shock, not least because I hadn't been paying attention to how much I was over-spending on a slow connection. As you can probably gather, I'm not a power user—I work from home, but I don't generally stream much, and I'm more than happy to wait half-a-day for big games to download (I'm old, you see).

But today I'm reminded that it's well-worth checking in on what you're paying for internet regularly. While browsing for an alternative, I found an absolute banger of a Spintel deal. For AU$80 a month I could be getting an NBN 250 connection with 240Mbps typical evening download speeds. That's less than what I'm paying for NBN 50 at the moment, and not only that, the AU$80 per month isn't an introductory offer: that's what you'll pay for the life of the plan.

Just to expand on that: usually most worthwhile NBN deals are introductory offers. I fully expected that AU$80 to be an introductory offer that would then rise to, say, AU$95 per month after six months. But that is not the case here, which, frankly, is kinda bizarre value.

While the NBN 250 plan is the most impressive in terms of what competitors are offering, Spintel's NBN 1000 price is also noteworthy. This gigabit plan offers a typical evening speed of 750Mbps (42Mbps uploads) and will set you back AU$90 a month. And again, that's not an introductory offer: that's "life of plan".

Note that if you've got a FTTN connection (fibre to the node) you won't be able to enjoy speeds any higher than what an NBN 100 connection provides. That said, FTTP is slowly but surely rolling out nationwide, and many households now qualify for a free upgrade.

If you're keen to do more research or check out some other plans, check out our guide to the best NBN plans for gaming.