NBN outages: what you can do when your internet goes down

Internet outages are an unfortunate fact of life, and they can be crippling to your daily life, especially for those relying on their NBN plans in order to work from home. Thankfully, there's a number of steps you can take to identify and rectify the issue, getting you back online in your time of need.

Best NBN 50 plans: our top picks for the best value 50Mbps internet

Is it down for everyone?

The first thing to do when your internet fails you is it to check if this outage is isolated to just your household. There are plenty of methods of checking this, including dedicated status pages on the provider's own site, but a third-party option may be the best port of call. And of course, if you main internet connection is down, you'll need to use a device with its own connection, such as your phone, to visit those status pages.

For the independent option, we suggest trying Down Detector, a global service run by Ookla (of Speedtest fame) with an Australia-specific domain that has pages set up for each of Australia's major internet service providers.

In an example of the usefulness of a third-party service like this: when Optus customers recently experienced outages across all of Australia, the telco's own status page was also down, while Down Detector was able to report on the outage live.

This service offers an amalgamation of data, including a graph of outage reports over the last 24 hours, stats on the most reported problems, an outage map, and the ability for customers to write in and report outages themselves.

To check individual providers, we've linked some of the more popular telcos' dedicated pages below:

It's just my internet

If you've been able to verify that your provider doesn't have any known outages or issues, then it's time to take a look at your own setup, in particular, your modem router.

While it's become a bit of trope these days, 'turning it off and on again' is still a surprisingly successful strategy when it comes to tech. We suggest powering down your modem, unplugging its power cable, and leaving it off five minutes before reconnecting and powering it on again.

This 'power cycle' could lead to your router re-establishing a connection that it has previously lost.

If that isn't successful, the next step is to contact your service provider and make sure they report a working connection on their end.

The fastest NBN plans available

NBN with 4G backup

In situations where your connection is indeed down, some NBN providers offer a 4G backup service to tide you over while a technician resolves the issue, either as a standard inclusion or paid extra.

These services are currently offered by Telstra, Optus, Tangerine and Vodafone, and we've linked their NBN 50 plans below:

Hotspot and other alternatives

Unless you're in the unfortunate situation where both your internet and phone provider's services are down, you should be able to use your mobile's hotspot function to save you in a pinch.

Both iOS and Android phones should have a hotspot or tethering setting in their quick menu, accessed by swiping down from the top of the screen. If you're on an iPhone and don't see this option, navigate to Settings > Mobile > Personal Hotspot and activate it from there, and the same goes for Android – Settings > Network and Internet > Hotspot and Tethering.

Enabling this setting creates a Wi-Fi signal from your phone, using its 4G or 5G network to push internet connectivity through to any device that connects to it. In some cases, these connections can even be faster than your home internet!

It's worth paying attention to how much remaining data your phone plan has for the month when using this method – while NBN plans often have unlimited or high capacity data caps, mobile plans tend to have far lower limits.

If all else has failed, and your situation permits, then it's worth tracking down a local cafe, library or similar institution that offers public Wi-Fi. It's not ideal but if your situation is critical, it can be enough to get you by.