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In case you missed the announcement a little earlier this year, Exetel took home the award for the best NBN provider in the 2026 TechRadar Australian PC Awards — I was on the judging panel along with a selection of my Australian colleagues, and it took us several hours of deliberation to reach our final decision.
When you consider there are over 150 internet service providers (ISPs) now active across Australia – each generally offering a broad range of both consumer and business plans – Exetel’s win becomes even more impressive. Yet you might be wondering how we arrived at our decision? After all, if the majority of providers claim to deliver a fast, reliable NBN service to your premises, why does Exetel deserve special attention?
Adapting to change
One of the main reasons we rate Exetel so highly is because of how it adapted to the planned NBN speed upgrades that arrived in September 2025. This saw the launch of a new wave of NBN plan speeds, including NBN 500, NBN 750 and NBN 2000.
Best of all, the first two of those tiers arrived at no extra cost to consumers; for customers that connect to the NBN via either fibre to the premises (FTTP) or hybrid fibre coaxial (HFC), NBN 500 effectively replaced NBN 100 and NBN 750 replaced NBN 250, respectively providing a 5x and 3x speed boost for free.
While my colleagues and I were aware of the incoming changes well before the September rollout, Exetel surprised us by jumping the gun (and beating all other providers to the punch) with the launch of its 500Mbps plan two months early, at the start of July 2025.
That wasn’t the only big change the provider introduced, however. What was arguably even more radical was the fact Exetel completely restructured its NBN plan lineup at the same time. Prior to the launch of its 500Mbps tier, the company offered plans for most other NBN speeds, but with the arrival of the new ‘One’ NBN 500 plan (which the name itself somewhat gives away…) it’s now the only internet plan Exetel offers.
You might think that puts Exetel at a disadvantage compared to other ISPs that offer greater choice and variety, but that’s not the case in my opinion.
The makings of a winner
There were several key factors that went into earning Exetel the award for best overall NBN plan of 2026. Firstly, speed. We use the official unbiased quarterly speed reporting data that’s collected by the Australian Competition & Consumer Commission (ACCC) when researching and recommending plans, and the most recent update, published in April 2026, found Exetel overdelivered on speed. In fact, when underperforming services are removed from the equation (which are generally those that have hardware faults), the telco recorded the highest average plan speed figure of all the providers monitored, consistently providing around 106% of its claimed 500Mbps speeds. That’s roughly 530Mbps.*
Secondly, Exetel offers some genuinely useful extra perks with the One Plan. These include being able to temporarily boost your download speed up to 1,000Mbps for an extra AU$1 per day^. And conversely, you can also drop the speed down to a slower 12Mbps and save AU$1 per day – ideal if you’re away from home for an extended period of time.
Finally, Exetel is owned by Superloop — the acquisition was completed in 2021 — and so it uses the same core network as its parent company. That’s important to know, because Superloop owns and operates its own dedicated fibre infrastructure across Australia, Singapore and Hong Kong, giving it more capabilities to optimise its broadband network and maintain peak performance.
Exetel also performs well when it comes to customer support, with thousands of glowing 5-star reviews on ProductReview.com.au.
Priced to perfection
Taken together, those performance stats, useful account features and positive customer reviews provide ample evidence that Exetel is one of Australia’s top NBN providers. You’d be forgiven, then, for expecting Exetel to charge a premium price. You’d be wrong. Perhaps the standout reason we selected Exetel as the best NBN plan overall – and by that, we mean the plan that will best suit the majority of Aussie homes – is price. Exetel’s One plan costs just AU$80p/m ongoing – well below the current AU$94 average for NBN 500 plans.
While some other NBN providers do charge less during an introductory deal period, that’s typically only for the first 6 months – after which in most cases the price increases to well above the AU$80 that Exetel is asking. When you take introductory discounts out of consideration, Exetel’s One plan is the lowest-priced NBN 500 on the market – and also the only one to come in at under AU$1,000 per year.
NBN 500 is undeniably the new internet-plan sweet spot in terms of balancing speed and cost, and the best option for most Australian households. And based on our year-round monitoring and analysis of NBN plans and deals, the Exetel One plan remains the best 500Mbps plan overall, delivering a compelling mix of performance, features and value.
* The Exetel One plan has typical evening speeds of 500Mbps for downloads and 40Mbps for uploads.
^ The Warp Speed boosting feature has typical evening speeds of 860Mbps for downloads and 85Mbps for uploads.
