Internet outages are an annoying fact of life and they can ruin everyday life, especially for those who rely on them. NBN plans in order to work from home. Fortunately, there are a number of steps you can take to detect and fix the problem to get you back online at the right time.
Before we begin, if you experience frequent outages, you may want to consider a 5G Home Internet Plan – as might be expected, these plans are based on the 5G network, not NBN, but are still able to provide tremendous speed, albeit in some places at the moment. Below you can choose some of the best, or keep scrolling to learn more about why your internet isn’t working.
Is it for everyone?
The first thing to do if you have the internet is to check to see if this failure is isolated just for your family. There are many methods to verify this, including special status pages on the provider’s own website, but a third-party option may be the best port of call. And of course, if your primary internet connection isn’t working, you’ll need to use a device with its own connection, such as a phone, to visit these status pages.
For an independent option, we suggest you try Detector downa global service operated by Ookla (known as Speedtest) with an Australian-specific domain that has pages created for each of Australia’s major ISPs.
As an example of the usefulness of a third-party service: in the event that Optus customers experienced shutdowns across Australia in 2021, the company’s own status page also didn’t work, and Down Detector was able to report the shutdown live.
This service offers aggregation of data, including a schedule of outage reports for the past 24 hours, statistics of the most reported problems, a map of outages and the ability for customers to write and report failures.
To check out the individual providers, we linked some of the most popular specialized TV companies’ pages below:
It’s just my internet
If you’ve been able to make sure your ISP has no known glitches or problems, then it’s time to take a look at your own setup, particularly your modem router.
Although this has become a trick these days, “off and on” is still a surprisingly successful strategy when it comes to technology. We suggest disconnecting the modem, unplugging the power cord and leaving it off for five minutes before plugging in and plugging in again.
This “power cycle” can cause your router to re-establish a connection that it previously lost.
If this is not successful, the next step will be to contact your service provider and make sure they report the working connection on their end.
NBN with 4G backup
In situations where your connection is indeed disconnected, some NBN providers offer a 4G backup service to help you while the technician solves the problem, either as a standard inclusion or for an additional fee.
These services are currently offered by Telstra, Optus and Vodafone, and we have linked their NBN 50 plans below:
Another NBN 50 deals
Hotspot and other alternatives
If you are not in an unfortunate situation when the services of your ISP and phone provider do not work, you should be able to use the access point feature of your mobile phone to save you as a last resort.
Both iOS and Android phones must have an access point setting or snap-in in the quick menu, which can be accessed by swiping down from the top of the screen. If you’re using an iPhone and don’t see this option, go to Settings> Mobile> Personal access point and activate it from there, and the same goes for Android – Settings> Network and Internet> Access point and binding.
Enabling this setting creates a Wi-Fi signal from your phone using its 4G or 5G network to connect to the Internet to any device that connects to it. In some cases, these connections can be even faster than your home Internet!
When using this method, you should pay attention to how much data remains in your tariff plan per month – while NBN plans often have unlimited or large data transfer capacity, mobile plans tend to have much lower limits.
If all else fails and your situation allows, you should look for a local cafe, library or similar institution that offers public Wi-Fi. It’s not perfect, but if your situation is critical, this may be enough to do without.