The NBN speed upgrades launched one year ago — here's how they’ve changed the face of Australian broadband

Some celebrations are in order today, as it’s been one year since NBN Co rolled out its ‘Accelerate Great’ program, giving Australia’s internet a much-needed boost and providing some excellent new entries in my guide to the best NBN plans .

On September 14, 2025, millions of Australians connected to the fixed-line NBN network via fibre to the premises (FTTP) or hybrid fibre coaxial (HFC) became eligible for substantially faster internet speeds.

NBN 100 — or Home Fast — received the biggest uplift, jumping fivefold from 100Mbps to 500Mbps, while the NBN 250 Home Superfast tier was tripled to 750Mbps.

The Home Ultrafast tier retained its near-gigabit download speeds but had its maximum upload speed doubled to 100Mbps.

NBN Co also introduced Home Hyperfast, its first residential multi-gigabit tier, offering wholesale speeds of up to 2,000/200Mbps over FTTP and 2,000/100Mbps over HFC.

It was one of the biggest changes to the NBN since the network's rollout began.

But one year later, did Australia's fixed-line network actually cope with all that extra speed? The short answer appears to be yes.

The NBN got faster — even if one number suggests otherwise Using data supplied by the Australian Competition & Consumer Commission (ACCC) , we can obtain a particularly useful before-and-after snapshot.

Its September 2025 report used measurements taken in the May prior, several months before Accelerate Great arrived.

At that point, fixed-line NBN services delivered an average of 102% of their advertised download speed during the busy evening hours.

The ACCC's next round of testing began on September 14 — the same day the new tiers launched — and measured upgraded services only after they had transitioned to their faster speeds.

Average busy-hour performance subsequently slipped to 100% of plan speed.

By the ACCC's final report in June 2026, based on March measurements, it stood at 99.4%.

While these average download speed figures appear to show a dip in performance, the opposite is in fact true.