An NBN speed tier is written as two numbers: download first, then upload. Every phone call, video meeting, cloud backup and card payment leaves your building on the second number, and that is the one retail plans give you least of. So the NBN speed a business needs is not the download figure in the ad. It is how much upload is free at your busiest minute.
You have a quote for business internet in front of you, or the contract is up for renewal. The pitch is about the download speed, and nobody has mentioned what happens to your phones.
A speed tier is a pair of figures, written as download then upload. A 100/40 plan means up to 100 megabits per second coming in and 40 going out.
Download is everything you pull in: web pages, email arriving, a file opened from the cloud, a video you watch.
Upload is everything you send out: your voice on a call, your camera in a meeting, last night’s backup, a card payment on its way to the bank.
The two halves are not sized the same way. Plans are advertised and priced on the first number, and the phones live on the second. The gap shows in nbn’s own business line-up. nbn Business 100 Essentials is 100 down and 40 up, and 250 Essentials is 250 down and 100 up.
Those are wholesale speeds. That is what nbn supplies to internet providers, rather than what any one customer is promised, and nbn says so in its own footnote. Hold on to that while you read a plan table.
VoIP means your calls travel over the internet connection instead of a copper phone line. The voice is packaged into data by a codec, which is the software that turns sound into a stream small enough to send.
That stream is small, and its size is fixed. 3CX, the phone platform many Australian businesses run, publishes 95.2 kilobits per second for one audio stream on G.711, the codec most systems use by default. That is 64 kbps of audio plus 31.2 kbps of network packaging.
Call it about 0.1 Mbps per call in each direction. That gives you a sum you can do on your own bill: about ten calls at once for every megabit of upload.
Six calls running at the same time need roughly 0.6 Mbps of upload. Take the number of calls you need at once as given. Your phone bill can tell you what that number is.
G.729 is a codec used where bandwidth is tight. 3CX puts it at 39.2 kbps per stream, so about 25 calls per megabit. You pay for that in audio quality and in extra work for the system.
A connection that carries the calls is only half the job. NBN phone systems share that upload with everything else in the office, so the phone system on the other end has to be set up around what is left.
Size it on the work, not on the headcount.
An office that runs phones, email and a bit of web work is well served by the entry business tier, which nbn lists at 40 Mbps of upload. That figure is wholesale too. By the arithmetic above, even well short of it, you have hundreds of calls at once, far more than a small office will ever run.
An office in video meetings every day is a different shape. Microsoft’s recommended figure for a Teams meeting is 2,500 kilobits per second of upload for each person on it. That is about the same upload as 26 voice calls, for one person in one meeting.
An office that moves large files or backs up to the cloud has a third pattern. A backup that starts at 9am and a file sync that never stops both take upload. They take it in the hours you are busiest.
Voice is the first thing you notice when the upload fills. A backup can wait half a second. A conversation cannot, and that is why the upload figure decides more than the download figure does.
Then there is the part the plan name does not tell you. The technology at your address caps what any plan can deliver. On Fibre to the Node and Fibre to the Building, nbn puts maximum wholesale speeds between 25 and 100 Mbps download and between 5 and 40 Mbps upload. On Fibre to the Curb it is 50 to 100 down and 20 to 40 up. Two businesses in the same town, on the same plan, can sit at opposite ends of that range.
Fixed wireless is a case of its own. It uses an antenna on the building to reach an nbn tower. It is common outside the fixed line areas. nbn states that nbn Business Service is not available on the nbn Fixed Wireless network. So a site on fixed wireless cannot buy the business service level, whatever it pays. A Shepparton branch and a Keysborough head office can share a plan name and have nothing else in common.
Connection quality varies street by street, so check the exact address, unit number included, for every site your phones run across.
The wires into the building are often the same. Business NBN plans carry a higher level of service than home plans, and the difference shows up on the day something breaks.
The other difference is the number you should be comparing. The published nbn speeds are wholesale, so look instead at the typical evening speed a provider publishes beside each plan. That figure is closer to what you will see at your desk.
A static IP is an internet address that stays the same instead of changing when the connection restarts.
It earns its place when something has to find you at a fixed point. That covers staff logging in to a server at the office, a system you host on site, some camera setups, and some phone configurations.
Most hosted phone systems do not need one. If you are told every phone system needs a static IP, ask which part of yours needs it. The answer is often none.
Static IP sits on some business plans and can be added to others, so check what your plan includes before you pay for it separately.
Three questions get you most of the way when you are comparing nbn business plans. None of them is about the download number.
Checking the upload figure on your current connection takes about five minutes. Do it before the contract renews, not after the first call that breaks up. More of the work moves to the cloud every year, and all of it leaves the building on the same half of the number.
Sixfam can check the upload on your current business internet connection against the number of calls you need at once. You will get a straight answer on whether the plan in front of you covers it. Call 03 9200 2800, or send your latest bill through the contact page.
Both. A call sends your voice out and brings the other person’s voice back in, and the two halves are about the same size. The upload side is the one that runs short first, because plans give you less of it.
Start from the upload figure and allow about ten calls for every megabit, on the codec most systems use. Then take off whatever else is running in that hour, because meetings and backups draw on the same pool.
The calls themselves ask very little of the connection, so they can work. What a fixed wireless site cannot get is the business service level, so it sits on the standard arrangement whatever the plan is called.
It is the figure a provider publishes for the busy part of the day, rather than the maximum the technology allows. It is the more honest of the two numbers when you are comparing plans.
Not on its own. If calls break up while a meeting is running or a backup is going, the upload is the part under pressure, and a bigger download number leaves that untouched.
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