tl;dr
We upgraded our NBN connection from FTTC to FTTP, and because the switch to FTTP allowed us to upgrade to the Home Ultrafast speed tier, now our download speeds are ten times faster and our upload speeds are four times faster that before.
Screenshot of an internet speed test from OpenSpeedTest that shows a download speed of 958.61Mbps, jitter of 0.00ms, ping of 3.0ms, and upload speed of 73.41Mbps.
The start of our NBN story
We got connected to Australia’s National Broadband Network (NBN) in December 2015.
Then, because we were renting, we moved house a few times. That meant both our connection speed and connection type changed every few years (which I documented along the way using the ‘NBN’ tag on this blog, in case you’re interested).
Screenshot from the NBN website showing the various types of fixed line connections available on the NBN: Fibre to the Premises; Fibre to the Building; Fibre to the Curb; Fibre to the Node; and Hybrid Fibre Coaxial. (Source)
All that stopped in 2022 when we bought a house in the northern suburbs of Melbourne that had a Fibre to the Curb (FTTC) NBN connection. That’s the connection type in which the fibre optic cable carrying the internet signal terminates at a distribution box on your street (ie the “curb”) and a standard copper cable goes from there to your house.
The speeds on this connection type were decent, but not great: 95Mbps down and 19Mbps up.
The upload speed, in particular, was irritating because it was half of what we’d had with a Fibre to the Premises (FTTP) connection in our previous places. Now it took me a lot longer to back-up my media to the cloud, for example, and I had to make sure I wasn’t doing any uploading when Nadia or I were on a video conference call for work (especially if Nadia was teaching a class). First world problems, I know, but irritating ones nonetheless.
A new hope
You can upgrade! No, you can’t.
Happily, in January 2025, NBN Co announced its ‘full fibre upgrade’ program. This would let 622,000 properties across Australia upgrade their existing, slower connection types to the fastest-possible Fibre to the Premises (FTTP) connection.
I immediately tried to sign up to this upgrade but found that we weren’t eligible yet. We live in a property with only three units and, at the time, NBN Co was prioritising upgrades for properties with four or more units.
*sigh*
You can upgrade now! Wait, no, you still can’t.
Not too long after, in October 2025, all types of properties became eligible for the upgrade so I immediately signed us up.
Screenshot of an email with the heading, “We’ve received your request” and the text, “Hi Ameel Zia Khan, We appreciate your interest in the nbn Full Fibre Upgrade for Complex Multi-Dwelling Properties at” followed by an address that has been blacked out. An italicised sentence just below this paragraph reads, “Please note that this application applies to all units/premises within the building or complex, not individual units or lots.”
I didn’t hear anything till November 2025, when someone from the Fibre Upgrades team at NBN Co reached out to say our application was still under review.
Then, in January 2026, they reached out to say we could now formally proceed with the upgrade. We just needed to fill out a form and each unit on the property needed to pay $275 to cover the remainder of the government-subsidised installation cost.
Unfortunately, in the intervening months, things had changed at our end: one of the units on our property had been sold and, when I reached out to the new owners to say, “hey, we’re now all set to do the NBN upgrade” these folks said they didn’t want to do the upgrade.
So that was that. End of story. No upgrade for me.
(Obviously that’s not how the story ended.)
The twist ending
Snatching victory from the jaws of defeat, at the end of February 2026, I got one final email from NBN Co that read:
Hi Ameel,
We’re writing to share an important update regarding the nbn® fibre upgrade at [YOUR ADDRESS].
Your premises/complex was previously progressing through the nbn Full Fibre Upgrade for Complex Multi‑Dwelling Properties program. Following a recent assessment, it has now been reclassified and is eligible to individually order an nbn® Fibre to the Premises (FTTP) service via a High-Speed Tier plan.
What this means
Instead of continuing through the Complex MDU upgrade pathway, individual premises within the complex/block can now request an order directly with their preferred retail service provider (RSP), provided they select an eligible high‑speed plan.
This meant our upgrade to FTTP was no longer an all-or-nothing deal for the whole property. Individual owners of each unit could now apply separately through their internet service providers (ISPs) to upgrade just their own NBN connections!
Woohoo!
Happily every after
From then on, things proceeded at pace.
Our ISP is iiNet – who we’ve been with since 2009! – so shortly after I received this email, I went to their ‘Fibre upgrade’ page and signed up for a free upgrade.
The very next day I got a message to say our upgrade-installation was booked for exactly one week later.
One week later, which was yesterday, the installer turned up and, within two hours, had:
laid the new fibre optic cable from the street to our unit,
installed two new connection boxes (outside box shown below), and
activated our new NBN FTTP connection.
Photo showing an large while box stamped NBN Co installed on a brick wall.
All I needed to do was log into our modem and uncheck the VLAN tagging checkbox that was needed for the old FTTC connection but was stopping our new FTTP connection from working.
And just like that, we were done.
Serious speed upgrade
So what speeds are we getting now?
Well, not only did we upgrade our connection type to FTTP, we also upgraded to the ‘Home Ultrafast’ speed tier that gives you download speeds of up to 1,000Mbps (ie one gigabit per second) and upload speeds of up to 100Mbps :)
And because we’d upgraded to the latest Synology router in 2024 – the WRX560, with its 2.5Gbps WAN port – I knew all our hardware (and the Ethernet cables in our walls) could handle the speed upgrade just fine.
Here, then, are our current download and upload speeds.
Graphic with two bar charts showing, respectively, download and upload speeds in megabits per second from 2009 to 2026. The bars are divided into groups by connection type. 2009 ADSL speeds are 6.9Mbps down, 0.9Mbps up. 2015 FTTB speeds are 46.7 down, 22.6 up. 2016 and 2018 FTTP speeds are 75.7 and 105.2 down, 36.5 and 37.2 up. 2020 and 2022 FTTC speeds are 91.9 and 94.7 down, 18.2 and 18.9 up. Finally, a differently coloured bar for 2026 Ultrafast FTTP shows speeds of 937.3 down, 89.0 up.
We’re currently getting speeds of 937Mbps up and 89Mbps down – which is a whopping ten times faster for downloads and four times faster for uploads!
What now?
So that’s it. The end of the road. Our final NBN upgrade is complete.
Yes, NBN Co has announced an Ultrafast II speed tier that gives you 2GBps download speeds, but that is absolutely not something we need at home so our upgrading days are very much over.
Now we just get to enjoy blazingly fast download and upload speeds, and the next time I need to upload a few terabytes of data to the cloud, I won’t have to leave my desktop switched on continuously for a few days in a row!
As someone whose work and personal life is inextricably intertwined with the internet, I am a very happy person right now :)