Every 5G home internet comparison leads with download speed. But if you work from home, stream, or back up files to the cloud, upload speed is the number that decides whether your connection works — and it is the number providers least want to talk about. Here is what each Australian 5G provider actually delivers upstream, and when NBN beats all of them.
In brief
- The upload speeds 5G providers do not advertise: Telstra, Optus, TPG and Vodafone compared for working from home, streaming and backups.
- Why upload is the hidden bottleneck: Download is about receiving: streaming Netflix, loading pages, downloading files.
- How much upload do you actually need?
- What each provider delivers: upload: The honest headline first: upload figures exist, but they are scattered — in a CIS here, a plan-page footnote there, a comparison table elsewhere — and no provider lea…
- 5G upload vs NBN upload: the comparison that matters: NBN tiers state their upload speeds explicitly, because NBN wholesale products are defined by both numbers.
Telstra’s fastest 5G home internet plan averages 300 Mbps download in the evening peak, and 30 Mbps upload. That asymmetry — loud about download, quiet about upload — runs across the whole Australian 5G home internet market. Optus publishes typical busy-period speeds of 50/11, 87/15, and 230/20 Mbps down/up for its three tiers. TPG’s current Critical Information Summary lists typical evening uploads of 16 Mbps on its Plus tier and 17 Mbps on Premium. The result is that shoppers compare 5G plans on a number they will rarely max out, while the number that decides whether their video calls, streams, and backups work gets a fraction of the attention.
Why upload is the hidden bottleneck
Download is about receiving: streaming Netflix, loading pages, downloading files. Upload is about sending: your video in a Zoom call, your live stream, your photos syncing to iCloud, your backup reaching Backblaze. Three things make upload the bottleneck that matters:
- 5G is engineered for download. Mobile spectrum is allocated asymmetrically — far more capacity for download than upload — because most consumer traffic is download. A connection that downloads at 300 Mbps may upload at 20–30 Mbps. That is a design choice, not a defect, but it means 5G’s headline speeds overstate what you can send by an order of magnitude.
- Upload workloads are continuous, not bursty. A download finishes and frees the connection. A video call, a live stream, or a cloud backup needs its upload rate sustained for minutes or hours. A connection that briefly hits 30 Mbps up but sags to 8 Mbps under sustained load will drop your stream even though a speed test looked fine.
- Upload failures are blamed on the wrong thing. A frozen Zoom call is blamed on Zoom. A failed stream is blamed on the streaming platform. A backup that never finishes is blamed on the backup software. In many Australian homes, the actual cause is an upload ceiling nobody told the buyer about.
How much upload do you actually need?
| Use case | Sustained upload needed | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Zoom / Teams video call (1 person, HD) | ~3 Mbps | Group calls and screen sharing push toward 5–8 Mbps |
| Two simultaneous video calls (WFH couple) | ~6–10 Mbps | Add a safety margin — calls spike when screens share |
| Live streaming, 1080p60 (Twitch/YouTube) | ~8–12 Mbps | Stream at no more than ~75% of your sustained upload; headroom matters more than peak |
| Live streaming, 4K | ~25–40 Mbps | Realistically out of reach on most 5G home connections |
| Uploading a 10-minute 4K video to YouTube | Depends on patience | At 15 Mbps up, a 5 GB file takes ~45 minutes; at 50 Mbps, ~13 minutes |
| Cloud backup, 1 TB initial backup | Depends on patience | At 10 Mbps up, roughly 9–10 days of continuous uploading; at 50 Mbps, roughly 2 days |
| Security cameras uploading footage | ~2–5 Mbps per camera | Two cameras uploading continuously can saturate a 10 Mbps upload |
| General browsing + cloud sync | ~5 Mbps | Photos, documents, and app sync in the background |
The pattern: casual use needs 5–10 Mbps. Serious use — streaming, creating, backing up — needs 25 Mbps and up, sustained. That is where the 5G providers start to separate.
What each provider delivers: upload
The honest headline first: upload figures exist, but they are scattered — in a CIS here, a plan-page footnote there, a comparison table elsewhere — and no provider leads with them the way they lead with download. The figures below are the best available from provider documents and current comparison tables, and every one of them should be treated as “typical, not guaranteed” — 5G upload varies with signal strength, tower load, weather, and how far your modem sits from a window.
Telstra. Telstra’s 5G Home Internet comes in three tiers, with typical evening (7–11 pm) speeds of 25/5 Mbps on Basic, 50/20 Mbps on Essential, and 300/30 Mbps on Premium (download/upload). Telstra’s own FAQ page frames the tiers around busy-period download averages (22, 43, and 297 Mbps), and the per-tier upload figures appear in current comparison tables of Telstra’s published speeds rather than in the FAQ itself — which is why so many pages quote Telstra’s download and stay silent on its upload.
Optus. Optus publishes typical busy-period (7–11 pm) speeds for all three of its 5G tiers on its own plan page: Everyday 50 Mbps down / 11 Mbps up, Fast 87/15, and Superfast 230/20. Upload rises with the tier — but slowly: the fastest tier’s 20 Mbps upload is less than double the cheapest tier’s, while its download is more than four times faster.
TPG. TPG’s current Critical Information Summary (February 2026) lists typical evening upload speeds of 16 Mbps on the Plus tier (50 Mbps download) and 17 Mbps on Premium (100 Mbps download), with max speeds of 20 Mbps upload on both. That is the clearest upload disclosure in the market — and it shows the same pattern as Optus: paying for the faster download tier buys you almost nothing upstream (1 Mbps more).
SpinTel. SpinTel publishes a 240 Mbps tier with 20 Mbps upload (as reported by WhistleOut from SpinTel’s published figures) — comparable to Optus’s fastest tier.
Vodafone / iiNet / Yomojo. None of these providers publish a typical evening upload figure for their 5G home plans in the sources we reviewed. Vodafone’s tiers are download-capped at 50 and 100 Mbps; Yomojo offers a Max tier, but their upload performance is unpublished. The absence of figures is itself information: if a provider will not state an upload number, do not assume it is good.
The summary table:
| Provider | Typical evening download (published) | Typical evening upload (published) | Source quality |
|---|---|---|---|
| Telstra Premium | 300 Mbps | 30 Mbps | Comparison table of Telstra’s published speeds — verify on Telstra’s plan page |
| Telstra Essential / Basic | 50 / 25 Mbps | 20 / 5 Mbps | Comparison table of Telstra’s published speeds |
| Optus Superfast / Fast / Everyday | 230 / 87 / 50 Mbps | 20 / 15 / 11 Mbps | Primary — Optus’s own plan page |
| TPG Premium / Plus | 100 / 50 Mbps | 17 / 16 Mbps | Primary — TPG CIS, Feb 2026 |
| SpinTel (240 Mbps tier) | 240 Mbps | 20 Mbps | Secondary — WhistleOut reporting SpinTel’s figures |
| Vodafone / iiNet / Yomojo | 50–225 Mbps (tier-dependent) | Not published | — |
5G upload vs NBN upload: the comparison that matters
NBN tiers state their upload speeds explicitly, because NBN wholesale products are defined by both numbers. Since the September 2025 speed upgrade, the fixed-line tiers are:
| NBN tier (FTTP/HFC) | Download | Upload |
|---|---|---|
| NBN 500/50 | 500 Mbps | 50 Mbps |
| NBN 750/50 | 750 Mbps | 50 Mbps |
| NBN 1000/100 | 1,000 Mbps | 100 Mbps |
| NBN 2000/200 (FTTP) / 2000/100 (HFC) | 2,000 Mbps | 200 / 100 Mbps |
| NBN 250/100 (Pro/Creator) | 250 Mbps | 100 Mbps |
Compare that with 5G: even the best 5G upload figure (30 Mbps on Telstra Premium) sits below the upload of the mid-tier NBN 500/50 plan, and TPG’s 17 Mbps is below even NBN 100/20’s 20 Mbps. The gap widens for sustained workloads — a wired NBN connection holds its upload rate far more steadily than a wireless one.
That does not make 5G useless for upload-heavy work. A 30 Mbps upload handles two video calls, a 1080p stream, and background sync simultaneously. It makes 5G a conditional choice: fine for a single creator or a WFH household, risky for a household where two people stream or back up at once, and a poor fit for anyone whose work is 4K upload or multi-terabyte backup. For those workloads, NBN 1000/100 or 250/100 is the honest answer — see our 5G vs NBN comparison, our Best NBN Providers guide and our NBN 250 explainer for the high-upload NBN options.
There is another 5G caveat worth knowing before you sign up: most 5G home internet plans sit behind carrier-grade NAT (CGNAT), which blocks port forwarding for game servers and remote access. Read our guide to 5G home internet, CGNAT, port forwarding and the workarounds that work.
How to test your own upload before committing
Do not buy on published figures — test on your own connection:
- Run a speed test at the time you will actually use the connection. Evening peak (7–11 pm) is the number that matters, not a midday test. Run it three evenings in a row.
- Test sustained upload, not peak. A 30-second speed test shows a burst. Upload a large file (1 GB or more) to cloud storage and watch the sustained rate — that is your real upload.
- Test with your real workload. Run your stream, your call, or your backup and watch for drops. A speed test cannot tell you whether your stream will hold; your stream can.
- Test modem placement. 5G upload is sensitive to signal quality. Moving the modem near a window facing the tower can change upload more than switching plans.
- Use the cooling-off period. 5G home internet is typically month-to-month. If your upload does not hold up in the first week, cancel — do not wait for it to improve.
What this means for you
- 5G home internet is sold on download; upload is where it is weakest, and the upload figures are scattered across CIS documents, plan pages, and comparison tables.
- Telstra’s Premium tier publishes 30 Mbps upload (5/20/30 across its three tiers); Optus publishes 11/15/20 Mbps across its three tiers; TPG’s current CIS states 16/17 Mbps; SpinTel’s 240 Mbps tier reports 20 Mbps.
- Vodafone, iiNet, and Yomojo publish no upload figure.
- NBN beats 5G on upload at every comparable tier: 500/50, 750/50, 1000/100, and the 250/100 high-upload tier all exceed any published 5G upload.
- If your work is video calls plus light cloud use, 5G upload is enough. If you stream, upload 4K, or run large backups, buy on upload — which usually means NBN.
- Before committing to any 5G plan for upload-heavy work, ask the provider for a typical evening upload figure in writing, and test sustained upload in your first week.
Sources
Shoaib Hassan
Shoaib Hassan is the founder and editor of AuTechWire, an independent technology publication covering broadband, mobile networks, privacy, startups, and consumer tech.
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