Being stuck on an ordinary NBN connection is almost part of the Australian experience these days. Fortunately, there’s always the option to upgrade — but NBN Co has traditionally charged for quotes. Until this week.
There doesn’t seem to have been any official announcement. But I’ll certainly take paying $0 for a NBN Technology Choice quote over the $330 or $660 NBN Co originally charged.
If you’re out of the loop, NBN Technology Choice is the government network’s official pathway for having your NBN connection upgraded from the less appealing offerings to a full fibre service. It was introduced as a program to help NBN Co roll out more fibre offerings without weathering the cost of giving fibre to households that might not use it. (Of course, others might argue that it would have made sense to roll out fibre in the first place rather than spending billions on copper that’s all going to be replaced anyway, and it would have been cheaper to do it sooner rather than later.)
But alas. You can at least now find out how much NBN Co will charge you to roll out fibre to your home, or how much it’ll cost to replace the giant eyesore that is the NBN Cabinet.
I ran the numbers on my place, and, uh, it wasn’t great.
Just a cheeky $7500 to upgrade from FTTC to FTTP. *sigh*
— Alex Walker (@dippizuka) February 4, 2021
If you want to run the numbers on your own place, simply drop your address into the “Get a quote and apply for a single premises” page here. Note that if you’re already on fibre to the curb, the page will give you a little prompt saying that FTTC connections have “allocated more network investments” to enable those users to connect on NBN 250 and NBN 1000 plans.
So, with that out of the way, let’s see what figures others have gotten . Just as a warning before you put your quote in: most people seem pretty unhappy with the quotes being spat out. There’s some great salt on social media, and this OzBargain post has a lot of fire if you draw energy from people’s collective disappointment. NBN also may not provide you with a quote if your address is deemed too “complex”, and the quotes provided are only good for 24 hours.
$9700 for me. Puked a bit in my mouth over that one.
— Justin Earl Cleveland (@JEarlCleveland) February 4, 2021
Yeesh, I’m glad there’s a way to get quotes without paying for it but it’s $15k where I live and $10k where I’m moving to soon. It’s crazy!
— Splitsie (@splitsie) February 4, 2021
So I just learned from @NBN_Australia that it will cost almost $3K to upgrade the crappy copper in the curb to FTTP.
Fibre that should have been installed already but @TurnbullMalcolm screwed it up in 2013.#ThanksForNothingMalc #SouthKoreaIsFaster! pic.twitter.com/HvgsIYoJ7V
— Mad As Mel (@Mad_As_Mel) February 3, 2021
~30k here to upgrade from fttn to fttp. Crazy.
— Adam Noble (@the_faceman) February 3, 2021
Got a quote to upgrade to FTTP from @NBN_Australia … $17,329 ????????????????
— Bronwen Zande (@BronwenZ) February 4, 2021
So, not great.
But what about yourselves — what NBN are you on currently, what would it cost to upgrade, and what would the upgrade have to cost for you to consider taking NBN up on the offer?
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