Australians living beyond the fixed‑line NBN footprint are now able to get high‑speed broadband from both NBN Co’s upgraded fixed wireless network and SpaceX’s Starlink satellite service, the ACCC’s latest Measuring Broadband Australia report has found.
The report, which measured performance during March 2025, found both networks were capable of delivering download speeds above 100 Mbps during the evening “busy hour” between 7pm and 11pm on weekdays. Starlink recorded an average busy‑hour download speed of 170.2 Mbps. NBN Co’s new Fixed Wireless Home Fast and Fixed Wireless Superfast plans produced median results of 166.2 Mbps and 283.5 Mbps respectively.
“Australians who live in regional and remote areas and cannot access a fixed-line network rely on alternatives such as satellite and fixed wireless services to connect to the internet,” ACCC Commissioner Anna Brakey said.
While download performance on the two services was broadly comparable, the report found Starlink delivered higher upload speeds. The average busy‑hour upload speed on Starlink’s standard service was 29.2 Mbps — higher than the upload performance observed on the fastest monitored NBN fixed wireless plan. By comparison, the popular Fixed Wireless Plus plan had an average busy‑hour upload speed of 11.2 Mbps.
Starlink also recorded lower average latency and faster page‑loading times for popular websites, the ACCC said. NBN fixed wireless services, meanwhile, reported fewer outages and lower packet loss. The regulator cautioned that the differences in those measures were small and unlikely to materially affect most users’ experience.
“In addition to our performance data, we encourage consumers to consider the price of the service, including any hardware and installation costs, and their household’s broadband usage needs” Ms Brakey said.
The ACCC welcomed the federal government’s announcement in the 2025–26 budget to extend funding for the Measuring Broadband Australia programme for another 12 months, through to June 2026. The programme, run by the ACCC since 2017, relies on data collected by UK‑based firm SamKnows and uses a methodology modelled on broadband testing schemes in the UK, US, Canada and New Zealand.
The report notes Starlink’s results exclude connections using Telstra’s Starlink service that is limited to plan speeds of 50/10 Mbps. The ACCC is also seeking more volunteers to take part in the monitoring programme; interested consumers can sign up via the Measuring Broadband Australia website.
Technical context: latency measures the round‑trip time for a data packet to reach a test server and return; lower latency improves responsiveness in real‑time applications such as video calls and gaming. Packet loss records the share of packets that fail to reach their destination — levels above about 1 per cent can cause lag, reduced video quality or dropouts during streaming and conferencing. The report also notes median averages were used for plans with smaller sample sizes.
