Confused by NBN plan discounting? This provider lets you skip the hassle, with NBN 500 for a flat monthly fee of just AU$80

In the wake of September's NBN speed upgrades – which notably saw most NBN 100 connections get switched to the new NBN 500 speed tier, effectively taking them from 100 Mbps to 500 Mbps downloads overnight – the whole pricing landscape has shifted. As providers vie for customers via incrementally lower introductory prices, it's sometimes hard to tell at a glance which particular offer is the best.

If you missed the excitement, NBN rolled out a huge speed upgrade to all households with either a fibre-to-the-premises (FTTP) or hybrid fibre coaxial (HFC) connection in September. This has dramatically changed the plan structure at most service providers, meaning that for most FTTP or HFC users, the cheapest (or at least, the most cost-effective) plan is now usually the NBN 500 tier. Lower speed tiers still exist, but they're primarily geared towards unfortunate users on older NBN technologies (such as fibre-to-the-node) who can't yet enjoy the higher-speed plans.

That means NBN 500 is the tier to watch if you want the best bang for buck, though nowadays that doesn't imply a sacrifice in speed because 500 Mbps downloads is a lot. If you've made do with NBN 100 all these years, chances are the automatic speed boost will blow your mind, and even for gamers, the higher tiers like NBN 750, NBN 1000 and NBN 2000 can be superfluous to requirements.

So, which is the most appealing NBN 500 plan on the market right now? Exetel's offering is great, especially when you scratch beneath the surface. It costs a flat AU$80 a month on an ongoing basis. In other words, that's not an introductory price: that's how much you'll pay for an NBN 500 plan, no questions asked, into the foreseeable future.

While that's not quite the cheapest for the first year; another provider offers a six-month introductory price of AU$68.90 and then AU$86.95 ongoing, making them marginally cheaper at AU$953.70 per year, versus Exetel's AU$960. But on an ongoing basis — i.e., after the introductory discount ends — that competitor ends up at AU$1019.40 per year, which is significantly more expensive than Exetel.

Few competitors offer the unique features that Exetel has either. For example, via the Exetel app you can opt to switch on Warp Speed, which for AU$1 a day lets you upgrade to the equivalent of NBN 1000 (860Mbps typical evening speed). Conversely, you can also temporarily downgrade your plan to 12 Mbps via its Hibernate mode and save AU$1 per day, which is a nice feature if you're going on holiday this summer.

Exetel's refer-a-friend program also gives you a way to save on your monthly plan costs on an ongoing basis, too. For each person you refer that signs up to Exetel, you'll save AU$1 off your monthly plan fee for as long as you both stay connected. That adds up over the course of a year – sign up seven friends, for example, and you'll recoup AU$84, or the equivalent of one month's access for free.

Exetel One plan | NBN 500 | AU$80p/m

Exetel has taken the simple road when it comes to high-speed NBN: it's introduced an NBN 500 plan and ditched every other tier, meaning signing up with this telco is pretty straightforward. Exetel offers 500 Mbps download speeds even during peak hour, and 50 Mpbs uploads. The yearly cost is AU$960.

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The determined simplicity of Exetel's plan is also appealing: it's just AU$80 for NBN 500. You don't need to worry about any other speed tiers because they don't offer any. You don't have to worry about the low introductory fees rising because there are no low introductory fees. It really doesn't get simpler than this.