The ACCC wants to increase the minimum NBN speed, is it enough?

Alex Angove-Plumb - Digital Content Editor

Last updated 01 April 2026

The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) has proposed NBN Co's entry-level plans be increased from 12Mbps downloads and 1Mbps uploads (12/1) to 25Mbps and 10Mbps (25/10), respectively. This new minimum product is with regards to the wholesale access NBN Co sells to internet service providers (ISPs), as opposed to what plans ISPs choose to offer to consumers.

If adopted, the new standards would be effective from mid 2027. Pricing for the new 25/10 minimum would remain the same as NBN 25/5 pricing as at July 1, 2026.

Thanks to NBN Co’s existing wholesale pricing structure, NBN 12 plans (the current minimum) are already about the same price as existing NBN 25/5 and 25/10 plans, despite having less than half the download speeds and five to 10 times slower uploads. As such, there’s little financial incentive for most consumers to choose the NBN’s current minimum offering over NBN 25, which could in part explain NBN 12's lack of popularity.

But while minimum downloads of 25Mbps mightn't improve performance for many low-cost plans, increasing minimum upload speeds to 10Mbps could be a game changer for some Aussies.

Automated cloud backup for files and photos is becoming standard for some products and services. In such an environment, a minimum offering of 1Mbps isn't even sufficient to support many single-person households. The 5Mbps of some NBN 25 plans is also arguably not up to the task – and is doubtless a disadvantage for many families with this limitation. Uploads of 10Mbps are better suited to modern demands and could help even the divide between lower-income households and those with faster plans.

Is it enough?

According to a recent report from the Australian Communications Consumer Action Network (ACCAN), there's already a feeling that 25Mbps for downloads doesn’t cut it from either a performance or financial perspective.

The Future of Australia’s NBN Community Engagement Report gathered feedback from Aussie communities, consumers, and other sources to identify problems with the NBN and make recommendations to address them. In the latest release, 50% of online survey respondents saw value in raising the minimum speeds to at least 100Mbps downloads and 20Mbps uploads (100/20) – significantly higher than the ACCC's proposed 25/10.

“People in the industry will say everyone is surviving on 25Mbps, and that’s fine," said one stakeholder quoted in the report. "People can’t innovate and improve their systems, particularly small businesses, because they can’t access higher speeds. 25Mbps doesn’t cut it.”

While not mentioned in the report, it’s worth noting a 100Mbps download speed maximum is currently the fastest available offering for premises with FTTN, FTTB or FTTC connections.

For pricing, 80% of respondents to ACCAN’s Consumer Sentiment Tracker supported making the minimum offering affordable for people experiencing financial difficulty. This would potentially be in contrast to NBN Co's current wholesale pricing structure, which in recent years has favoured plans with 100Mbps or faster max download speeds at the expense of slower plans such as NBN 12, NBN 25, and NBN 50.

One stakeholder was quoted as supporting full subsidies for people who can’t afford an NBN plan, while another said "low speed tier plans are more expensive than they should be," adding "pricing is insane".

Alex Angove-Plumb

Digital Content Editor

Alex Angove-Plumb is a Digital Content Editor at WhistleOut and an award-winning journalist. He's been in the tech publishing industry since 2010, putting him a few short years away from the title of Grizzled Ancient in his chosen profession. He was an original WhistleOut-er before running NBN Co's corporate blog for two years, then moving on to a lengthy stint at CHOICE. Now he's come home.

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