Two students, two very different broadband problems, one shared root cause: the wrong provider for a fibre building. Both live in blocks wired for fibre to the premises (FTTP), where gigabit speeds are available — yet one kept dropping out at night mid-game, and the other was quietly paying more for a slower plan. Here is what we found and how we steered each of them to a better-value setup.
This student is in Mascot on an Occom plan (around 100/20), with a Huawei ONT (the fibre box on the wall) and an ASUS router. The complaint: the connection drops out at unpredictable times at night, wrecking their gaming, and repeated calls to the provider had not fixed it. The important clue here is that the building is fibre — the Huawei box on the wall is the ONT that terminates an FTTP line, not a modem. On a fibre line, random night-time dropouts are worth escalating properly, and if a provider cannot stabilise it, the same fibre socket can carry a different retailer.
- Suburb: Mascot. Provider: Occom. Plan: ~100/20. ONT: Huawei. Router: ASUS.
- Symptom: intermittent night-time dropouts ruining online games.
- Provider support had been contacted repeatedly without a real fix.
- Building is FTTP (fibre) — the wall box is an ONT, so gigabit tiers are on the table.
The second student is in Zetland on Aussie Broadband (about 250/22), again with a Huawei ONT and a TP-Link router. Nothing was broken — the issue was value. On the very same kind of fibre line, other retailers offer far higher speed tiers for a comparable monthly cost. For a share house especially, a 1000Mbps plan split between flatmates is dramatically better value than a mid-tier plan. Because the building is FTTP, the higher tier is physically available; it is purely a matter of choosing the right retailer and plan.
- Suburb: Zetland. Provider: Aussie Broadband. Plan: ~250/22. ONT: Huawei. Router: TP-Link.
- No fault — the plan was simply poor value for a fibre line.
- On FTTP, gigabit tiers are available for a similar monthly cost from other retailers.
- For a share house, a 1000Mbps plan split across flatmates is the best-value option.
First, confirm your building is fibre. If the wall box looks like the Huawei ONT in these two homes, you almost certainly have FTTP and gigabit tiers are available. Second, you are usually not locked to one provider. Agents or previous tenants sometimes imply you can only use a particular retailer — in most cases that is not true. Go to a provider website, enter your address, and it will tell you which plans your line supports. That single check is how both students could move to better value without any rewiring.
- Check the wall box: a fibre ONT means FTTP and gigabit plans are on the table.
- Enter your address on a provider site to see the real speed tiers available.
- You can switch retailers on the same fibre socket — no new cabling needed.
- For gaming, a stable gigabit line plus a capable router beats a cheap mid-tier plan.
Result
Both problems traced back to provider choice on a fibre (FTTP) line, not hardware. We confirmed each building is fibre, explained that they are not locked to one retailer, and pointed them to how to check plans by address — with a Superloop-style 1000Mbps plan as the best-value option for a share house. No rewiring required.