The push to get Australians to switch to the NBN

Aussies should be on high alert as internet providers hound consumers to switch to the problem-plagued National Broadband Network. This is why.

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Customers being told they must switch over to the National Broadband Network should be on high alert.

Telco and internet providers need to be careful before trying to push customers to switch to the NBN before their old phone and internet network is disconnected in their area.

I’ve been contacted multiple times by my internet provider in the past six months telling me I must switch to the NBN or else.

But what they are telling me in fact is not true.

After using the NBN check your address tool, it told me I did not have to switch to the NBN until January 2021. So I could confidently tell my existing internet provider to stop pestering me.

Instead I would switch in my own good time before January rolls around.

It’s calls like this that catch out the unprepared customer who could easily be talked into switching to the NBN without realising they may actually not have to just yet.

When the NBN arrived in my suburb in Melbourne’s inner southeast I was bombarded with flyers from every telco known to man trying to get me to switch over.

After a few months the junk mail finally started to dry up, until my telco started contacting me.

Telco and internet providers need to be careful before trying to push customers to switch to the NBN before their old phone and internet network is disconnected in their area. Picture: Supplied

Not only did they phone me and asked me to confirm my identity – which I refused to do – remembering they contacted me not the other way around, they tried to tell me I had to switch over, now.

There’s no doubt the $51 billion NBN has been under siege for cost blowouts and its slow rollout.

The competition watchdog, the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission, said in April last year entry-level NBN prices should be similar to ADSL deals.

Since then NBN have massaged their deals to make them more competitive.

But with my existing provider, switching from ADSL to NBN will cost me more so why would I bother switching?

It’s going to be an extra $10 a month – or $120 a year – to switch over, a cost I’m prepared to delay.

And with the hype surrounding 5G, which will deliver faster speeds than 4G, some Australians could well bypass being hooked up to the NBN anyway.

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Access to Telstra’s 5G network is still very limited in 32 cities across Australia and so too is Optus, while Vodafone is switching on its first 5G sites within weeks.

The big problem NBN faces is the fastest NBN speeds reach 80 to 90Mbps, while at the top end of 5G speeds are expected to theoretically reach 20Gbps, which is more than 200 times faster than the NBN at its peak.

So for now, I’m not going to be forced into switching to the NBN.

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@sophieelsworth

Originally published as The push to get Australians to switch to the NBN