Telstra is offering a rare discount on its NBN plans, in the form of a AU$10 saving on your monthly bill for six months. It only applies to new customers, unfortunately, and naturally you'll need to live somewhere NBN friendly. But it's fairly uncommon for Telstra to reduce the cost of its pricey NBN plans, so it's worth consideration.
The NBN 50 plan, which has an advertised "50 Mbps typical evening speed" is normally AU$90 a month with a 24 month contract, but at the moment you can sign up for AU$80 a month for the first six months, after which the price reverts to the usual AU$90.
The same discount applies to Telstra's NBN 100 plan, which as the name implies, offers "100Mbs typical download speeds" in the evening for AU$110 per month across 24 months. Currently it's AU$100 for the first six months.
There are other bonuses: there's no connection fee if you sign up online, and you'll get to keep the included modem if you stick out the whole 24 months. But naturally, there are caveats too: if your connection is FTTN (fibre to the node) you probably can't get the NBN 50 deal, and as for the NBN 100 deal: you can't get it at all.
Still, if you fit all the criteria it's worth a look, and Telstra also offers a Game Optimiser service for AU$10 a month, which purports to help lag by optimising the flow of data on your connection. I haven't tried it, so I can't vouch for its effectiveness, but it uses the same technology as high-end Netgear gaming routers like this one. The offer ends March 29.
