Internet outages are a sad fact of life and can paralyze your daily life, especially for those who depend on their NBN plans to work from home. Fortunately, there are a number of steps you can take to identify and correct the problem, allowing you to reconnect when you need to.
It's for everyone?
The first thing to do when your internet connection goes down is to check if the outage is isolated to just your home. There are many 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 your main Internet connection is down, you'll need to use a device with its own connection, like your phone, to visit these status pages. For the standalone 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 the major Australian ISPs. In an example of the usefulness of a third-party service like this: when Optus customers recently experienced outages in Australia, the phone company's own status page was also down, while Down Detector was able to report the fault live. This service offers a combination of data, including a graph of outage reports from the last 24 hours, statistics on the most reported issues, a fault map, and the ability for customers to write and report themselves. To check individual providers, we've linked some of the most popular carrier pages below:
It's just my internet
If you've been able to verify that your provider has no known outages or issues, it's time to take a look at your own setup, especially your modem/router. While it's become something of a trope these days, "turn it off and back on" is still a surprisingly successful tech strategy. We suggest that you turn off the modem, unplug the power cord, and leave it off for five minutes before plugging it back in and turning it on. This "power cycle" could cause your router to re-establish a connection that it had previously lost. If this is unsuccessful, the next step is to contact your service provider and make sure they are reporting a working connection on their end.
NBN with 4G support
In situations where your connection drops, some NBN providers offer a 4G backup service to assist you while a technician fixes the problem, either as a standard inclusion or as an add-on. 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 find yourself in an unfortunate situation where your phone service provider's phone and internet services are down, you should be able to use your mobile phone's hotspot feature to save yourself in no time. IOS and Android phones should have a hotspot or pinning 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, go to Settings > Mobile > Personal Hotspot and turn it on from there, and the same goes for Android - Settings > Network & Internet > Hotspot & tethering. Enabling this setting creates a Wi-Fi signal from your phone, using your 4G or 5G network to broadcast Internet connectivity to any device that connects to it. In some cases, these connections can be even faster than your home Internet. Keep in mind how much data is left on your phone plan for the month when using this method. While NBN plans often have unlimited or high-capacity data limits, mobile plans tend to have much lower limits. If all else has failed and your situation allows, then it's worth finding a local cafe, library, or similar institution that offers public Wi-Fi. It's not ideal, but if your situation is critical, it may be enough to get you out of it.