Seniors Broadband Plans

NBN

This is Australia’s new national broadband network (which is what the letters stand for!). It’s being built by the federal government as a way of replacing the very old telephone network across the entirety of Australia, making sure it works for decades into the future and providing much faster speeds to meet future needs as well.

You’ve probably heard or read about the NBN in the news – it’s become a bit of a political football – but ultimately, everyone will be connected to it, and it will handle not only your broadband internet, but your home phone line as well. There are various different ways of connecting to the NBN, but you don’t get to choose which one you get – that will be decided for you based on where you live. The whole idea is to make it simple and easy to get connected and, for the most part, it does. You do, though, have some options to choose from when signing up, which we’ll get into detail about below.

ADSL

For decades, people have been using the existing phone network to connect to broadband, and ADSL is the technology that allows it all to work. With the NBN rolling out to more and more areas at a rapidly increasing pace, ADSL is becoming rarer, but it’s still available for those who need it. If you still have your regular home phone and haven’t been asked to switch yet, then ADSL is likely to be your best option. It has its inconveniences – mostly the length of time it can take for it to get set up once you order a service – but it’ll still do just fine until the NBN comes along.

Cable

Cable broadband operates through the pay TV cables that run past your home – the ones on the poles owned by Optus or the ones in the ground owned by Telstra and used for Foxtel. For many years it provided an alternative method of getting broadband if you were lucky enough to have a cable in your street. With the arrival of the NBN, the Optus cable network is being decommissioned and the Telstra cables will become NBN cables, with Foxtel eventually leaving them. Some parts of the NBN will move onto these cables, but you can still connect to cable broadband through Telstra and Optus in the meantime.

Mobile, Fixed Wireless and Satellite

Far less common – and usually only used when there’s no other alternative – these types of broadband can help get people in remote areas connected even though there’s no suitable cable running past their home. The NBN will use fixed wireless and satellite where it needs to, while mobile broadband (basically home broadband connecting via the mobile phone network) can be used anywhere but is generally only a temporary measure while you wait for a more permanent connection.