Is gigabit NBN overpriced? I did the math to try and figure out if NBN 750 is better bang-for-buck

As the resident NBN and home-internet expert for TechRadar Australia, I spend much of my time looking out for the best internet deals , and there are almost invariably a number of compelling options at every different speed tier — and these can be a great way to sense-check if you’re overpaying for your current NBN service.

When choosing deals, much of my decision-making revolves around two easily identifiable metrics: price and typical evening speed (TES).

Typical evening speed is something all internet service providers (ISPs) have to disclose before you sign up for a plan.

In essence, it tells you the download speed you can realistically expect to achieve during the busier evening hours of 7pm to 11pm.

Being able to view the TES also means you can easily identify which ISPs ultimately offer better value — i.e. the ones advertising fast evening speeds at competitively low prices.

With almost all of the best NBN 500 plans promising to deliver their maximum 500Mbps speeds even during the peak evening period, it’s a tier where direct price comparisons make sense.

However, things get a bit wobblier when you’re shopping for faster speeds, such as NBN 750 and NBN 1000.

Most plans on these tiers make more conservative promises when it comes to typical evening speed — for example, rather than the 1,000Mbps you might expect from NBN 1000, on these gigabit plans, most providers only promise evening speeds in the 820-860Mbps range.

With that TES figure closer to 750Mbps than 1,000Mbps, it prompted me to ask a simple question: Is NBN 1000 actually worth it, or should you save yourself some moolah every month and opt for NBN 750 instead? Cue a whole load of number crunching! So average First, I calculated the current average monthly cost of NBN 750 and NBN 1000 plans, alongside the average TES advertised by the providers I monitor.

After crunching the numbers on NBN 750 plans from 14 providers and NBN 1000 plans from 20, the final results were: Measure NBN 750 NBN 1000 Average price AU$105.98 AU$114.95 Average TES 730.2 Mbps 835.4 Mbps As expected, the results show that NBN 1000 plans do not, on average, get as close to their nominal 1,000 Mbps tier speed as NBN 750 plans get to 750 Mbps.

The gigabit gap was quite substantial, falling 164.6Mbps shy of the tier’s nominal 1,000 Mbps tier, compared to a shortfall of just 19.8 Mbps for NBN 750.

With the average monthly cost less than AU$10 difference between the two tiers — specifically AU$8.97, or 8.5% — the question then became whether the NBN 1000’s typical evening speeds are worth it from a value perspective.