When comparing broadband plans, many Australians may focus on download speeds, but upload rates matter too - increasingly so.
Image: Sebastian Hermann
Computing in general has gone back to the future in some ways. Way back when, computing involved huge mainframes with terminals plugged into them - everything was stored on the mainframe. Then the personal computing revolution kicked in and we were storing information on our own devices.
That's changing again to some degree, with the storage and backup increasingly cloud-based. While convenient, many would have experienced frustration when backing up to the cloud - it can take a long time if you're on a slow connection and have a bit to upload.
Whether it be your iPhone automatically backing up your photos and videos to iCloud while logged into your home Wi-Fi or sending large files to colleagues and friends, having poor upload speeds heavily impacts your connection's overall performance. It can be a real problem particularly for business internet users, as time is money.
Here's an example of what's on offer in terms of NBN plan upload and download speeds - and your mileage may vary.
- NBN 12: 12 Mbps download, 1 Mbps upload.
- NBN 25 – 25/5: 25 Mbps download, 5 Mbps
- NBN 50 – 50/20: 50 Mbps download, 20 Mbps
- NBN 100– 100/40: 100 Mbps download, 40 Mbps upload.
"Symmetrical" Broadband
Not all broadband plans are structured with upload speeds far slower than download (asymmetrical) - but you'll need to choose a non-NBN provider.
Lightning Broadband offers symmetrical upload and download speeds across all of our residential and business plans. "Symmetrical" simply means the upload is as fast as download - so, for example, if you're on one of our 100Mbps plans (and we also offer faster plans than this), your download speed will be 100Mbps and upload speed also 100Mbps. Combined with the unlimited data we offer on all our plans, which is rapidly becoming a "gotta-have" for many Australians, this ensures every one of our customers receives the experience they deserve.
Just to give you an idea of the comparison in speeds, on the NBN 25 plan it would take more than 28 minutes to upload 1 gigabyte. On Lightning Broadband's 25Mbps plan (our entry level offering), it would take around just 5 minutes, 43 seconds - and that's even during evening peak time.
If you're not sure what upload speed you're currently achieving, try our internet speed test, which will gauge your connection's download and upload performance along with ping and jitter.
Pick up some more tips on comparing broadband plans.
