Your speed will depend on a number of factors, including distance from our nearest tower, the capacity on that tower and how you are connecting to your Lightwire connection from within your house.

When we talk about speed, we are talking about the speed you can get from your Lightwire supplied router back to the speed test server on our network. This is different from the speed you can get over WiFi as the distance from your router or number of other devices connected to the same network affect the speed.

With the above detail taken into account, we see average download speeds of 64.9Mbps across the network, and guarantee a download speed of 10Mbps during peak periods (3pm to 10pm).

This means that if you aren’t getting 10Mbps or better, we will treat this as a speed fault and get it sorted for you.

Lightwire is unique among rural broadband providers in that we go past talking about potential speeds or average speeds – we commit to guaranteed minimum download speeds.

During off-peak periods we commit to providing at least 20Mbps download speeds, and during on-peak times we commit to at least 10Mbps download speeds.

Want to know what guaranteed download speeds mean for you? Read it here.

In designing our plans, we have tried to find a balance between ensuring our costs are covered and keeping your costs as low as possible.

When it comes to installation, we need to install a dish on your roof that will point at a tower on a nearby hill, and install a WiFi router. All of this is done by a Lightwire engineer.

If you sign a 12-month term, we do all of this for free.

Lightwire gives you unparalleled flexibility. Regardless of which plan you sign up to, you can upgrade or downgrade that plan at any time without penalty. This is done via your customer portal.

Upgrades take effect immediately, and plan downgrades take effect at the start of the following month.

Yes. Lightwire won’t interact with your current internet company to cancel the service for you, that needs to be handled by you directly. 

Unfortunately, even with the use of sophisticated software, we can never be 100% sure that we can connect a service at an address until our installer has attended site and made an attempt.

To get you connected we need a clear line of sight between somewhere on your property and one of our towers, and that tower needs to be close enough for the speeds to be acceptable.

When you sign up, we know how close you are to a tower, so we are pretty sure that you can connect. Once you lodge an order, our team manually checks whether any hills will get in the way or whether we have seen a failed install at the same (or nearby) address previously. If that all looks good, your order goes to an installer.

The last issue we usually see is that of trees. We can’t see these using our software, so it is always the last hurdle to clear.

If distance, hills and/or trees aren’t an issue, you are almost certainly able to connect. The best option is to start by lodging an order, there is no cost to you if we can’t get you connected.