Small business is outgrowing its internet. This is where the NBN gets exciting.

There is a good story hiding behind that headline

Four in five businesses are still using residential NBN plans. Read that quickly and it sounds like another story about Australia being behind on the internet.

My reaction is a bit different. Look at how much small businesses are already doing online, then imagine what becomes possible when their connections and systems properly catch up. There is a lot to be excited about here.

A small team can run an online shop, work with people around the country, share large projects and use software that would once have needed a dedicated IT department. The next improvement might be as simple as getting those tools to work together without everybody waiting for the same upload to finish.

As someone who makes videos and runs Compare, that part gets my attention. A progress bar is a fairly dull colleague. It contributes very little to the meeting.

What the new research actually says

The West Australian's 8 September headline comes from an AAP story by Adrian Black. NBN Co published its own overview the same day, drawing on research it commissioned.

Among the surveyed small businesses, 83% used consumer NBN plans, 34% did not know their connection speed and 69% were heavy users of cloud workflows. Those figures describe the research sample; they do not prove every business on a residential plan has a problem.

NBN also reports business-plan customer numbers rising from 35,000 in June 2025 to 120,000 in March 2026. It links the change partly to its September 2025 wholesale price reductions on selected business plans through Accelerate Great.

That is encouraging movement. NBN has a commercial interest in selling its services, so I would treat its research as a useful prompt to review a connection, rather than a diagnosis of every small business in the country.

The more interesting question is what owners could do with less friction. Could staff collaborate without juggling file transfers around calls? Could a growing team use the same systems from different locations? Could somebody finish the day's admin during the day?

The upload number deserves more attention

We are very good at shopping for the big download number. Downloads matter, obviously, but a business also sends things out: project files, backups, video, photos and information shared with other people.

Think about a creative studio sending a finished job to a client. Or a building business uploading site photos while the office is on video calls. Those tasks can make the smaller upload number on the plan much more relevant.

Here is a simple illustration. Sending a 1GB file at a constant 20Mbps would take about six minutes and 40 seconds. At 200Mbps, the same calculation gives 40 seconds. That uses decimal gigabytes and ignores overheads, competing traffic and limits at the receiving service. It is a calculation, not a speed test or a promise.

The useful part is the time you stop organising your day around. An upload that finishes promptly is easier to fit into a normal workflow than one you have to leave running while everyone works around it.

And a faster internet plan will not fix every slow task. If the Wi-Fi is struggling at the back of the office, the laptop is overloaded or the cloud service is having a bad day, those things need attention too.

Project Epic shows why this is about people

The AAP report follows Project Epic, a disability support provider in Sydney's Sutherland Shire. Its co-founders, Abbey Johnston and Alana Chandler, started the organisation in 2022. The report describes a business supporting around 70 participants and coordinating more than 250 shifts a week.

Chandler told AAP that moving to a business internet plan made a meaningful difference. Staff need access to current information, while the business uses AI to help with data entry and analysis. That is the organisation's reported experience, rather than a controlled comparison of internet plans.

This is the example that makes the story land for me. Getting the right information to the right person can make a working day easier and help a team deliver a better service. The value reaches well beyond somebody getting a more impressive speed-test screenshot.

I like technology most when it quietly gives people room to do the job they actually care about. For a support organisation, that could mean less time fighting an administrative process and more attention available for participants. That is a much more interesting outcome than simply buying a faster connection.

The future I am looking forward to

I can see a lot of potential for smaller Australian businesses here. A specialist in Perth collaborating with an interstate team. A regional business reaching customers well outside its town. A small retailer keeping its online orders and shop operations in step. These are the kinds of opportunities I want better connectivity to make easier.

Cloud tools can give a small team a shared place to work without everybody sitting in the same building. Add sensible automation and there is scope to reduce repeated data entry, speed up handovers and spend less time chasing the latest version of a file.

AI adds another reason to be optimistic, provided it has a useful job. Drafting routine material or helping organise information can be valuable. Buying a pile of subscriptions and hoping productivity appears is a less convincing strategy.

And let's keep the bandwidth claims sensible. Typing a question into an AI chatbot does not, by itself, justify a multi-gigabit connection. The stronger case is the whole workload: files, media, backups, calls and several people using online services at once.

What excites me is that a small business can build capabilities gradually. Start with one annoying process, improve it, then move to the next. Better connectivity gives that process more room to grow.

What does a business plan actually add?

NBN's current wholesale range includes Business 500 Pro at up to 500Mbps download and 200Mbps upload on FTTP. For comparison, residential Home Fast II is listed at up to 500Mbps download and 50Mbps upload. The same headline download speed can hide a substantial difference in upload capacity.

Residential services are also improving. NBN lists Home Hyperfast at up to 2000/200Mbps on FTTP, so a residential label alone does not mean a connection is slow.

Business service arrangements can add support features. NBN advertises a four-hour fault-restoration target for Business Service Pro, subject to conditions including location. This is a wholesale target offered to providers; a retailer's commitment to its customer may differ. It is not a guarantee that every fault is fixed in four hours.

That is why I would compare the actual offer. Ask about uploads, support hours, fault handling and backup connectivity, as well as the monthly price. Confirm which features are included and what happens when the primary connection goes down.

For a sole trader whose current service comfortably handles the work, staying put may be entirely sensible. For a team regularly competing for upload capacity, or a business where interruptions are costly, a properly specified business service deserves a closer look.

Start with the work, then choose the connection

If you run a small business, I would use this news as a reason for a quick review. You do not need a grand digital-transformation project to ask a few useful questions.

• What are the download and upload speeds on our current plan, and what do we actually get during working hours?
• Which tasks slow down when several people are online?
• Is the problem the internet connection, the office Wi-Fi, the equipment or the application?
• What support and backup arrangements would we need if the connection stopped working?
• What is available at our address, and which upgrade would solve a real problem for a sensible total cost?

I'm positive about where this is heading

Australia's small businesses have plenty of ambition. Making the supporting technology easier to use, easier to access and better matched to their work is something worth getting behind.

A faster connection cannot create a good business on its own. But it can remove an obstacle between a capable team and the work it wants to do. Combined with useful software and decent setup, that is a worthwhile improvement.

The future I am excited about is a small team being able to take on a bigger project, reach another customer or get home with the admin finished. If the next stage of the NBN helps more businesses do that, I think we have a good reason to be optimistic.