The National Broadband Network (NBN) is supercharging Australia’s fixed broadband market, with fibre gradually replacing copper for the last mile and generous free speed-tier upgrades landing in millions of homes – and after NBN’s Accelerate Great initiative in September 2025, all fixed-line retail service providers (RSPs) in Australia have noticed big increases in their quality of their offers, says research from Opensignal.
In its August 2026 Australia fixed broadband experience report, the analyst reviewed fixed broadband network performance from 1 April to 29 June 2026, ranking the providers nationally and in each of the five largest cities for reliability, consistent quality, download speed, upload speed and video. It covered fixed wireless access (FWA) and satellite customer experience for providers Aussie Broadband, Optus, Superloop, Telstra, TPG, Vocus and, of great interest, Starlink.
Essentially, the NBN Accelerate Great initiative provided substantial speed tier upgrades for fibre to the premises (FTTP) and hybrid fibre-coaxial (HFC) users – from 100Mbps and 250Mbps to 500Mbps and 750Mbps, respectively, while also introducing a 2Gbps tier. Simultaneously, NBN relaxed eligibility requirements for the full transition from copper to fibre along with lowering fees for the country’s Regional Broadband Scheme.
As a result, the broadband experience with fixed-line services based on the NBN was found by Opensignal to have resulted in a number of major improvements, ranging from more than 50% faster download speeds for Superloop and Aussie Broadband to nearly doubled speeds for Optus since summer 2025.
Quality of Experience metrics also saw what were categorised as “substantial” increases due to higher-speed tiers for all major fixed-line RSPs. TPG saw the highest improvement in its Reliability score out of all fixed-line RSPs, of 66 points, while Superloop was found to have delivered the highest improvement for Consistent Quality, namely 11.3 percentage points.
In FWA, Telstra led for speed, while Optus was the leader for Consistent Quality. Superloop retained both the overall Download Speed and Upload Speed awards, with Opensignal revealing that users on this network enjoyed the fastest fixed-line experience in Australia, with average speeds of 148.1Mbps and 27Mbps. Regionally, Superloop won every single city fixed-line award, either outright or jointly.
Yet with satellite broadband possessing massive potential in such a large country, one of the key findings in the study was that Starlink has become a disruptor on the Australian Fixed Broadband market and controlled around 6% of the market at the end of the study period.
Opensignal revealed that users were increasingly churning from traditional ISPs to make Starlink their primary broadband provider, with Australia being one of Starlink’s major success stories. As many as one out of every five rural households that switched internet providers last year chose Starlink.
The analyst stressed that this trend was not exclusive to Australia’s rural areas, and noted that urban areas in the country also saw a steady rise in adoption of Starlink services. Furthermore, the study highlighted how promotional discounts on Starlink Mini equipment and the improved reliability of its service have taken Starlink from a “niche rural solution into a value-driven alternative for urban and suburban households”.
At the same time as revealing the Fixed broadband experience report, Opensignal published Faster fibre, older routers: The gap holding Australian broadband back, examining how the NBN was changing Australia’s internet.
Even though fibre was gradually replacing copper for the last mile and generous free speed-tier upgrades landing in millions of homes, the report found that many Australians aren’t able to fully take advantage of them.
Indeed, Opensignal stated that its data showed something that may surprise many Australian subscribers on the NBN that the biggest barrier now to experiencing network improvement was their own outdated routers sitting on their shelf. And that at the top end of performance, a router may matter a lot more than a service provider.
Almost two-thirds (64%) of readings across major RSPs were found to still come from older Wi-Fi generation routers (Wi-Fi 3, 4 or 5), meaning, said the analyst, the majority of Australian households cannot fully benefit from the infrastructure improvements now in place. Wi-Fi 6/6E/7 users across all six major RSPs converged around 500Mbps showing how a router has more impact on peak performance than which NBN provider Australian users are with.
