NBN Info
Now that NBN is available in Ashtonfield, Tenambit and a lot of East Maitland, we are getting a lot of calls for advice.
How do I get NBN ?
If you are lucky enough to be in an NBN ready area, you will probably already have a fibre connection box on the outside of your house.
You need to contact an ISP and sign up for an NBN plan. Most NBN plans are a bundled internet and phone line package. You can usually transfer an existing home phone number to an NBN provider. This process is called porting. If you decide to port a number, DO NOT CANCEL your existing service until it is transferred and working on NBN.
The ISP will contact NBNCo and their contractors will install the inside equipment, an NTD and possibly a battery backup.
You can nominate the internal location as long as it meets environmental requirements and practical installation limits.
Hint: Garage is a popular choice
Installation with battery backup
Installation without battery backup
Inside NTD - showing 2 x UNI-V and 4 x UNI-D ports (explained below)
Will NBN save me money ?
Yes it should if you select the right ISP and plan. Big savings for many people in fact.
It's worth understanding the 2 different technologies used to deliver your home phone service on NBN.
The best tech by far is UNI-V. Your existing phone just plugs directly into the first UNI-V port on the NTD.
No extra hardware or special voice router is required. Much easier and less to go wrong.
The 2 x UNI-V ports allow you to have 2 phone services from different providers.
The UNI-D ports are similar and allow for 4 different providers. They are not for connecting multiple computers to same network.
TPG deliver home phone on UNI-V and are our recommended provider, particularly if home phone is important to you.
Bundled internet/phone plans with unlimited phone calls to local and national numbers start at $49.95 a month.
The other technology used to deliver home phone is UNI-D.
This is basically a VOIP (Voice over IP) system and requires a special router with voice functions or an ATA to convert your existing phones to be VOIP capable. It's fair more complex to setup and fault find if you experience issues. There are a lot of internet attacks against routers and ATA using the SIP protocol used and so VOIP equipment needs to be configured with correct security precautions and firewall settings.
It's better to avoid it and use UNI-V.
However Exetel do have a particularly attractive (UNI-D based) low end plan that suits some customers (particularly if home phone is not needed or not critical)
They do 100GB of data with a bundled VOIP service for $39.95 a month. This is more data than the cheapest TPG plan.