Superloop NBN plans review

Unlike other providers that diversify their offerings between NBN, ageing broadband technologies, mobile plans and/or entertainment packages, Superloop is almost entirely focused on NBN. And when it comes to its NBN plans, Superloop cares about two things: fast speeds and regularly recurring competitive promo pricing.

Superloop offers fixed-line NBN services to metro areas across six plans which, in the past 12 months at least, are rarely offered at full price and are, instead, offered as part of six-month promotional pricing.

Superloop shuns the minimum NBN 12 plan and kicks off its plans at NBN 25, with the nbn Home Basic plan for $59.95 per month, which currently has a lengthy promotional-pricing deal of $54.95 for the first six months if you get in by 31 March 2022 for great 22.2Mbps typical evening download speeds.

This six-month promotional pricing logic covers all six of Superloop’s NBN plans. 

While not the cheapest in terms of first-year pricing for NBN 25 plans, Superloop is still nipping at the heels of the cheaper providers in terms of cost, and it also offers slightly faster typical evening speeds. You can see this Superloop plan in comparison to other cheap NBN 25 alternatives below.

Next up is Superloop’s NBN 50 plan, which normally costs $74.95 a month but has six months of promo pricing at $58.95 a month for great 48 Mbps typical evening download speeds.

Superloop’s big competitor, which you can see in the plans list below, is Spintel’s NBN Unlimited Plus plan, which tends to be cheaper during promo periods and has ever-so-slightly faster typical evening download speeds (50Mbps).

Outside of Aussie Broadband, Superloop is one of the rare providers that offers both NBN 100/20 plans and NBN 100/40 plans, with the former being more common these days. Superloop’s nbn™ Home Fast plan is the 100/20 version that costs $73.95 a month for the first six months before reverting to its usual $89.95 fee.

For those who fancy more upload bandwidth, Superloop’s nbn™ Home Fast 40 plan is the 100/40 variant, which normally costs $99.95 a month but is currently $82.95 per month.

As you can see from the provider plan ranking below, Superloop has extremely competitive pricing for its 100/20 plan, whose potent combo of price and typical evening download speeds are challenged only by Spintel’s NBN Unlimited Premium plan (when it has similar promo pricing).

Given Superloop’s emphasis on great download speeds, it’s not surprising that the provider has also tapped into the faster end of town by offering NBN 250 and NBN 1000 plans. Superloop’s nbn™ Home Superfast plan is competitively priced when it’s not on special ($108.95) and even better currently with the $20 monthly discount for the first six months.

The price/speed combo is challenged only by Aussie Broadband when it has promotional pricing, which you can see in the table below, otherwise the Superloop plan tends to be our top pick for best NBN 250 plan these days.

The last Superloop plan is its nbn™ Home Ultrafast offering, which is an NBN 1000 plan. It normally costs a respectable $119 a month and is currently reduced to $99 for the first six months, with good typical evening speeds of 600Mbps.

There is a catch, though. As you’ll see in the list of other NBN Ultrafast plans below, other providers offer unlimited data, while Superloop restricts its NBN 1000 users to 3TB a month. That 3TB limit may sound like a lot of data, but faster download speeds tends to lead to increased data usage, and given how ubiquitous unlimited-data NBN plans are these days, it’s disappointing to see Superloop cap its fastest plan.

For the vast majority of 2021 Superloop was one of the best NBN providers to turn to if your main consideration was fast download speeds, including during the internet’s typical busy period, which is 7pm to 11pm every day. That’s changed in recent times, with Telstra offering typical evening download speeds for most of its NBN plans that match the maximum potential speeds, while Aussie Broadband also recently boosted its advertised typical evening download speeds (they’re now above Superloop’s advertised speeds).

In its pursuit of promotional pricing and fast speeds, Superloop has left potential perks by the wayside. Zero contracts and $0 setup fees for its NBN plans is a great starting point, but it’s also common practice among providers these days. There’s no option to purchase a pre-configured router or modem-router from Superloop, no home phone bundles (or any other bundles), and there’s no exclusive content.

The main Superloop feature that’s been running since 1 May 2020 and will end on 30 June 2021 (unless extended) is an admittedly impressive referral program. Users can log into their Superloop account, copy a unique referral code and, if the person they send it to uses it to sign up, the referrer scores 10 percent off their bill for six months (up to $10). If you refer more people, you can effectively stack those discounts until you pay nothing for your monthly NBN bill.

If you have problems, you can reach out for help via Superloop’s responsive social media (Twitter and Facebook) and phone support. While Superloop is less about self-support and more about reactive customer support, there is an FAQ and other guides. Superloop also uses 100% Australian support.

In terms of customer satisfaction, Superloop appears to float around just above average. Consumer reviews on Product Review and Google were around three out of five at the time of updating this review, with Trustpilot the lowest at two out of five. According to our internal ranking, these user-generated scores put Superloop in the top 10 for customer satisfaction.

For such a new provider, Superloop scored considerably high when it comes to customer support options. This is an important point of comparison. Cheaper providers like Kogan can offer some great value on NBN plans but Kogan has next to no customer support if you’re having issues. Superloop, on the other hand, has loads of customer support avenues.

Click on the ‘Go’ button next to any of the six Superloop plans that you like the look of to be taken directly to the Superloop sign-up page. The next thing you’ll need to do is punch in your address to see whether Superloop services your area. Select the plan you want to connect to from the list of eligible options, then follow the prompts after clicking on the ‘Signup now’ button.

Here’s a look at all six of Superloop’s NBN plans, which range from an affordable NBN Basic II plan (25/10Mbps) right up to a competitively priced NBN Ultrafast (1000/50Mbps) plan.

The provider’s most notable edge over most of the competition is its physical connection to every NBN Point of Interconnect (POI) in Australia. Most NBN providers (and there are a lot) have to outsource this and lose some of the control and access to information that helps troubleshoot connection issues in the process.

Superloop also owns SubPartners, a company dedicated to feeding high-performance submarine cable systems between Perth, Sydney, Singapore and Indonesia to better connect Australia to Asia.

That all sounds super impressive but the bottom line is this: Superloop offers some of the fastest average evening speeds in Australia at a decent price.

Back in 2017, Superloop also forked out $12 million to acquire Fixed Wireless provider NuSkope, which serviced roughly 10,000 homes, schools and businesses in Adelaide at the time of the acquisition.

Superloop was founded in 2014 by Australian Bevan Slattery and is now a publicly traded company that operates out of Brisbane, Queensland.

Bevan Slattery is a tech entrepeneur from Rockhampton, Queensland with a storied history in launching data centre providers and high-speed fibre networks aross the Asia Pacific.

When it was first founded in 2014, Superloop was purely a provider of fibre network infrastructure that operated across Australia, Singapore and Hong Kong. However, it has only started providing its home and business services in the last few years so they're still a fresh face in the Australian NBN market.

Back in 2017, Superloop acquired NuSkope's fixed wireless customer base and network infrastructure for a cool $10 million, starting its journey as a consumer-facing service. Subsequently, Superloop has also acquired SkyMesh fixed-line customers (2018) and more recently acquired the well-known NBN provider Exetel in a huge $110 million deal (2021).

Experiences will vary between customers but as one of the few providers still offering upload speeds of 40Mbps on the NBN Fast 100 tier, Superloop comes highly recommended as one of recommended broadband providers for gaming. 

Another benefit of gaming on Superloop is its reliable latency. According to the ACCC's December 2022 quarterly report, Superloop services averaged 8.5ms latency to the customers participating in the broadband speed test program. 8.5ms is exceptional when compared to other providers and it's absolutely fit for online gaming.