Two Blokes Talking Tech
Tech Guide #695 - Why your NBN speed sucks and what you can do about it
26 May 2026
Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
This is Tech Guide with Stephen Fennec, the podcast that keeps you updated and educated.
Hello and welcome to Tech Guide episode 695. Great to have your company once again. Thank you for listening. My name is Stephen Fennegan. I'm the editor of techguide.com.au. On this week's show, the five mistakes you're making that are slowing down your NBN speeds. And Apple has released a new sports app. but Aussies won't like what they left out.
In the Tech Guide reviews, we're going to take a look and listen to the Sony The Collection luxury headphones. And we are also going to take a look at the new Medea dishwasher that can save you back. And Tiniko takes on Dyson with its new lineup of stick facts. And we'll answer all of your questions in the tech guide help desk.
And it's all brought to you by Netgear, the company that keeps you connected. And Norton, the company that keeps you protected. It is one of the most often questions I get asked here at Tech Guide. The most common question, how can I make my Wi-Fi better or faster? That's number one. Number two, by the way, is I'm traveling. What do I do with my phone? Do I do an eSIM? That's popular.
Number three is what TV do I buy? There's your top three. But today, we're just concentrating on that top question about your Wi-Fi speeds and how to make it better. Some interesting research done by the NBN has shown that this was among more than 12,000 customers. From that research, they've revealed the five worst Wi-Fi mistakes that are slowing customers down.
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Chapter 2: What are the five mistakes slowing down your NBN speeds?
And I've got to say, yeah, I agree with these conclusions here because it's what I've been recommending all along. This is what I've been telling my readers and listeners and viewers and anyone who bothers to ask me. how to improve Wi-Fi. And you've got to remember, Wi-Fi is so important to us now, fast Wi-Fi, reliable Wi-Fi, because you think about the number of things we're doing at home.
We're working from home, studying from home. We're also, we have smart devices that need to connect and we're streaming and shopping and doing so much on the internet. If there is any speed we're leaving behind, then we're going to know about it.
So being able to improve your situation is going to make your household a lot happier, especially if you're a family, you've got young kids or even teenagers. If the internet's not working, they're going to be the first people to tell you and to find out and let you know they're not happy. So these are the five worst mistakes according to the NBN, which I agree with.
I've been saying this all along. that you should look at. If you are in the boat where your speeds are not what you're paying for, so if you're on, let's say, a 500 megabits per second plan on the NBN and you're not getting those sorts of speeds, then there's something wrong. You need to take a look at your situation, your setup, your gear. I'm about to go through all the things you need to do.
Let's start off with the equipment. You need the right gear for the right job. If there's any tradies listening, that's probably a creed they live by. So there's, according to this research, a third of Australians didn't realise that to achieve the speeds they wanted, the equipment's got to be able to handle it and be able to keep up with it.
Two-thirds recognised this as being very or extremely important. Now, if you have, for example, increased your planned speed, then you need to ensure that the gear you have, the equipment you have, the modem router or mesh router can match that speed so that you're getting what you're paying for. So check to see what's included.
from your nbn provider so if you have say for example you're you're a customer at one nbn provider you've just uh gone from 100 megabits per second to 500 or you might have gone to a gigabit per second do you need a new router this was a question i asked i moved i wanted to get the super fast connection this is when i'm back when i was an optus customer
And they said, yep, we're going to move your plan. And I said, this was like two weeks planning. They gave me a date when it was going to happen. The fiber was connected to my home. And I said to Optus, so what happens now? Do I need a new modem? And you know what Optus told me? They didn't know. It took...
It took hours for them to work it out and is the reason why I left Optus and I joined Aussie Broadband. It took Aussie Broadband five minutes to onboard me as a new customer and I had a modem router in the mail and that's the reason. And I knew because I was going up from my regular plan, which was only 100 megabits per second, to nearly a gigabit per second. that I needed.
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Chapter 3: How can you improve your Wi-Fi speeds effectively?
puts the internet around my home, I could be upstairs in my bedroom, the corner of the house and still get 975 megabits per second. So I really don't need a professional. But not everyone's in that situation. And if you are building, renovating, I would recommend wiring it if you can, because wired always beats Wi-Fi.
even though Wi-Fi speeds are terrific, wired is always going to be, if you had a choice of wired without any inconvenience, then choose wired every time. So that's another reason to maybe think about bringing in a professional. Number three, expecting your old gear to work with your faster speeds. Now, you know that saying, you can't teach an old dog new tricks.
Well, that does apply to old equipment. If you've got older gear, then you may need to consider an upgrade. Now, one in five NBN customers, that's 20%, have upgraded to a newer Wi-Fi router. Older Wi-Fi standards also can't achieve higher speeds. So I know a lot of you listening say you've had your modem router for four or five years, three years. There are older Wi-Fi standards.
For example, Wi-Fi 4, which many customers are still using today, can only achieve a maximum download speed of 100 megabits per second. Wi-Fi 7 we're up to and we're talking several gigabits per second.
So if you're in this situation, say you've got the Wi-Fi 4 old modem router and you've just recently gone from 100 megabits to 500 megabits per second, you're not going to experience that speed increase. So you need a new modem router. Among those who did upgrade to a newer router, 30% said it made their speeds much better, with a further 37% saying it made it a little better.
Number four, opting for a Wi-Fi range extender instead of a Wi-Fi mesh network. Now, in all fairness, before Wi-Fi mesh networks were a thing, all we had were Wi-Fi range extenders. And these were little things where if you plug them in and it'll talk to your router and then push the Wi-Fi into a specific little area of your home, maybe down a little passage into a room.
And at that time, that was enough. This was pre-streaming services, pre all the stuff, the working from home, all this was years ago. And since then, of course, Wi-Fi mesh networks have taken over. Now, I've always said the NBN issued or your NBN provider issued modem routers. Modem part, excellent. Brings your internet into your house, excellent.
The router part, which is the Wi-Fi part, not so good, which is why you need Wi-Fi mesh network. There's Netgear, there's Eero, there's Google Nest, there's all these brands out there. Obviously, we're going to recommend Netgear. They're the one we've been using and I've recommended to so many other people. They're easy to set up and work really well, as does the Eero.
I've got an Eero set up in my home as well. So the mesh network, if your modem is still going okay and can bring in the internet to the speeds to which that you're paying for, then the wireless side of things, the mesh network needs to take over. Now, the 3 in 20 in this survey, that's 13% of NBN customers, added a Wi-Fi extender to their existing network.
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Chapter 4: What equipment do you need for optimal NBN performance?
And my flight, right in the middle of my flight, was my team, the South Sydney Rabbitohs, were playing the West Tigers. And all I had on board was Wi-Fi, but very basic Wi-Fi. I couldn't stream anything. The best I could do was to refresh the League Live app to get the live scores, and thankfully South won that game.
But, yeah, it was very frustrating because it wouldn't refresh sometimes, and I'm thinking, geez, I'd pay money to watch this on this plane, but I wasn't able to do that. But anyway, we got the score in the end, got the win in the end as well. But Apple Sports app, if you're happy with those other sports, and look, I'm using it.
I don't mind checking out a bit of NFL, which starts in a few months, and Major League Baseball. I know there's a lot of baseball fans here too. I'm a big golf fan too, so the PGA Tour, be able to track all the majors and all the other tournaments. Plenty here to do already, but I think it's a shame that they didn't have NRL, AFL, and cricket. Well, cricket, we've got until summer for that, but...
NRL, AFL. Come on, Apple. Give us a go here. But otherwise, if you, of course, the FIFA World Cup is around the corner. You'll be able to see everything through the Apple Sports app. Check it out for yourself, techguide.com.au.
You're listening to Tech Guide with Stephen Fennec.
The Tech Guide podcast is proudly supported by Netgear. They're Australia's number one Wi-Fi brand. Now, earlier we were talking about the mistakes people were making about their end that was slowing down their NBN speed. So listen up. When it comes to elite Wi-Fi performance across your entire home, Orbi Wi-Fi 7 is in a class of its own.
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And now, a Tech Guide review with Stephen Fenwick.
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Chapter 5: How should you set up your Wi-Fi gear for better connectivity?
But yeah, not bad though. There's also a mode where if they're absolutely dead, a five-minute charge will give you three hours of listening time. So that's pretty good. But the other added flexibility too is you can still listen while you're charging. Other headphones don't let you do that. This one you can. There's also, there's easily removable ear pads as well.
So if you ever need to give them a clean or replace one or both, you're able to do that. Sustainability wise, Sony says 25% of the plastic used is made from recycled materials and they ship in plastic free packaging to reduce the environmental impact. Now, the 1000X The Collection are available now, and as I said, $995. So there's two colors.
There's like a, I think one's a beige-y color and the other one's black. The beige-y ones have a stainless steel sort of silver metal look, whereas the black pair have a darker metal, so there's no contrast. It's all black. Same, exactly the same, each color, the same quality, the same premium styling and luxury, just different colors.
So yeah, I think if you're a real Sony fan and you really want the best and you really want to look good doing it, then hey, the Sony 1000X may be the headphones for you. Check out our complete review at techguide.com.au. We've got some appliances to get through right now. And you know what? I've got to say, appliances really do well on Tech Guide. I know my readers are big appliance fans.
Whenever I write about appliances, the stories really go well. So here's two more. Well, the first one is the Madea dishwasher. Now, Madea is a brand-new Chinese brand, I believe, that's just started open business in Australia. They're one of the world's largest home appliance and smart technology companies. and they've just opened for business in Australia.
One of its first products is this new Easy Lift dishwasher. Now, Easy Lift doesn't mean you lift the dishwasher. Easy Lift means that it has the Easy Lift basket as its bottom tray that can be raised 25 centimeters, even with the load of up to 18 kilograms. So you know when you bend down You know, I said in the intro to save your back, and apparently one in four Australians have back issues.
So this is more than, sorry, more than four million. So what's that? One in six, one in seven has back issues. So four million Aussies living with some form of back pain, then this is going to appeal to them.
And I love the fact that, and I'm the dishwasher emptier in my place, and the thing, how we've got our dishwasher set up is that the dish drawer is right near the dishwasher, and we deliberately put it as the second drawer, not the top drawer, so that you can easily just go from dishwasher to drawer while keeping, we're still bending down, but you're not getting up and down all the time.
But in this case, that bottom tray can come up and you're saving your back. Why not? It's also dishwasher, the dishwasher is energy and water efficient. It's got a 5.5 star water rating, 4.4 star energy rating. It also has, here's an interesting one, dual zone wash feature. So it can actually isolate the wash and focus on either the upper or lower basket. Say you haven't got a full dishwasher,
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