Revamped Sky Muster Plus NBN satellite plans will launch August 9

Brodie Fogg - Managing Editor - Streaming

Last updated 29 July 2019

NBN Co is set to launch new Sky Muster Plus plans on August 9, giving Satellite NBN customers access to faster download speeds and data-free (or "unmetered") access for select online activities.

What is Sky Muster Plus?

There are two key elements to a Sky Muster Plus plan: faster download speeds, and unmetered data usage for essential services.

While NBN Satellite plans are typically capped at NBN 25 speeds, Sky Muster Plus plans can burst above this when there is enough capacity on the network. In trials, some customers were able to achieve speeds of over 50Mbps.

In addition, NBN Co will monitor the data usage on your network and categorise all activity into two categories: "metered" and "unmetered". Unmetered traffic is data-free, and as such, won't count against your monthly download allowance.

There are three types of web traffic that will be categorised as unmetered on a Sky Muster Plus plan: email, updates (for select operating systems) and basic web content (e.g. text and images).

All traffic that outside of these three categories, such as streaming video (Netflix, YouTube etc) or file sharing will "inscrutable traffic" (e.g. any traffic running through a VPN) will still use data as normal.

When you exceed your monthly data limit, metered traffic is shaped to 512/256kbps for Peak Hour allowance and 2048/512kbps for Off-Peak allowance. Unmetered traffic isn’t shaped, even if you go over your data allowance, within reason.

To go with these new Sky Muster plans, NBN Co has conjured up an all-new Fair Use Policy. For example, it states that a Sky Muster Plus service must not go over its metered data allowance by 30GB and that you must not "routinely transfer emails more than 20MB in size" with regards to data-free usage. That's oddly specific, but understandably stringent for a satellite network.

In the lead up to the launch of Sky Muster Plus plans, NBN Co trialled them with SkyMesh customers. As part of it this, it found that a quarter of all traffic from the 50 participants was categorised as unmetered and that speed test results averaged 43Mbps (though it isn’t clear if that’s for peak evening hours or an overall average).

How do the Sky Muster Plus plans differ from existing Sky Muster plans?

Besides what we outlined above, Sky Muster Plus plans will be more expensive than standard Sky Muster Plans. SkyMesh’s Sky Muster Plus plans are already available for pre-order and will set you back $74.95 per month for 100GB (50GB Peak/Off-Peak), $139.95 per month for 200GB (100GB Peak/Off-Peak) and $199.95 per month for 300GB per month (150GB Peak/Off-Peak).

Sky Muster Plus plans have no lock-in contracts, and if the results above are to be believed, should deliver satellite customers speeds between 43 and 50Mbps.

SkyMesh’s current Sky Muster plans start at $39.95 per month for 50GB of data (10GB Anytime Data and 40GB Off-Peak) and go up to $199.95 per month for 260GB of data (120GB Anytime Data and 140GB Off-Peak data).

SkyMesh is currently the only provider with pricing information available for Sky Muster Plus but we know that a few more providers, such as Clear Broadband, HarbourISP, and Ant Communications are taking expressions of interest.

You can compare current NBN Sky Muster plans here.

Brodie Fogg is also Associate Editor at Reviews Australia

Brodie Fogg

Managing Editor - Streaming

Brodie Fogg is WhistleOut Australia's Managing Editor for Streaming. He's been writing about tech, streaming, games and telco since 2015. He previously managed a team of entertainment editors at Finder, and has also appeared on 7NEWS.

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