Telco Help

Internet dropouts ยท symptom

The internet drops out at the same time every day

A dropout that keeps an appointment is not random, and that is good news. Something is either loaded at that hour or scheduled at that hour, and the two need different fixes.

Last reviewed: 15 August 2026 · by Alien IT Solutions

Which connection type are you on?

A dropout that keeps an appointment is not random, and that is good news. Something is either loaded at that hour or scheduled at that hour, and the two need different fixes.

The answer to this symptom is genuinely different on each of the five nbn technologies, because the physical thing that fails is different. All five are written out below. Jump to yours, or read the lot.

Jump to your connection type

Not sure which one you have?

Look at the box your router plugs into. A separate nbn box with Power, Optical and Alarm lights means fibre to the premises. Four lights reading Power, Downstream, Upstream and Online means HFC. Blue lights on a small unit means fibre to the curb. An antenna on the roof means fixed wireless. And if there is no nbn box at all, only a modem from your provider plugged into a phone socket, you are on fibre to the node.

The light decoder walks you through it, or read the longer explanation of the connection types.

FTTP: Fibre to the Premises

Least likely to be the nbn network. Look at schedules and your provider.

FTTP gives you a dedicated fibre path to nbn's equipment, so you are not sharing the last stretch with the street the way HFC and fixed wireless users are. That makes access network congestion the least likely explanation of the five technologies.

Which leaves two much more common causes. The first is a schedule. Something in your house runs at that hour: a backup, a console downloading updates overnight, a security camera uploading, a router set to reboot itself daily. The second is your provider's own capacity, which is no longer about nbn's wholesale charge at all.

What to try yourself

  1. Work out whether it is a slowdown or a true dropout. If devices stay connected but nothing loads, something is saturating your link. If the connection actually drops, look at the Optical light.
  2. Check your router's settings for a scheduled reboot. Many providers ship routers with a nightly restart enabled, and it is the single most common cause of a dropout that happens at the same minute every day.
  3. Look at what is scheduled in the house. Cloud backups, console updates, camera uploads and software updates all default to the small hours, and one device can fill an upload channel.
  4. Test with a wired computer during the bad window so you are measuring the connection rather than the Wi-Fi.

What to say to your provider

Say: I am on FTTP. My service degrades at the same time every day and it is not my Wi-Fi, I have tested wired. Please check for congestion on your own network and backhaul, not the nbn access network.

That last distinction matters on FTTP. Pointing at their network rather than nbn's stops the call going in a circle.

Every light on the nbn connection box and what it means.

FTTN: Fibre to the Node, and Fibre to the Building

Could be congestion, but on FTTN it is often the neighbours.

Two things happen on FTTN at peak. The first is ordinary congestion further up the chain. The second is specific to copper: your pair runs in a bundle with your neighbours' pairs, and the signals leak between them. That leakage is called crosstalk, and it rises when more of your neighbours are using their connections hard, which is the same hours you are.

There is a third possibility that catches people out. nbn runs an automated system that watches unstable lines and lowers their speed to make them stable. If your line has been dropping, that system may have capped you, and the cap does not lift on its own quickly.

What to try yourself

  1. Check your modem's status page for sync speed. If your sync speed itself is low, no amount of provider capacity will help, because the ceiling is on the copper.
  2. Note whether the connection actually drops or merely slows. Crosstalk usually slows and errors rather than disconnecting outright.
  3. Look for a scheduled reboot in your router settings before blaming the network.
  4. Write down the date and time of every dropout and how long it lasted, for at least three days. A list of timestamps is the difference between a fault your provider can escalate to nbn and a phone call that ends in try restarting your router.

What to say to your provider

Say: I am on FTTN. Performance collapses at the same time each evening. Please tell me my current sync speed and attainable rate, and whether my line has been speed limited for stability.

Asking for the attainable rate is the question that gets a real answer. If they say your line is capped for stability, that is a fault to fix, not a fact to accept.

Why there is no nbn box on FTTN, and what to read instead.

FTTC: Fibre to the Curb

Congestion is possible, but check the short copper run first.

FTTC shares the fibre back from the kerbside unit, so peak hour contention can exist, but the copper run is short enough that crosstalk is much less of a factor than on FTTN.

Because the copper is short, a genuine daily pattern on FTTC more often turns out to be something scheduled, or something electrical in your house that runs on a timer. Anything that puts noise onto your wiring at the same hour, a pool pump, a timed heater, a cheap phone charger, can show up as a connection that misbehaves on schedule.

What to try yourself

  1. Check for a scheduled router reboot first. It is the most common cause of a same time daily dropout on any technology.
  2. If it is a slowdown rather than a dropout, test wired during the bad window and record the result.
  3. If the timing lines up with an appliance switching on, try running that appliance at a different hour for a couple of days and see whether the pattern moves with it.
  4. Write down the date and time of every dropout and how long it lasted, for at least three days. A list of timestamps is the difference between a fault your provider can escalate to nbn and a phone call that ends in try restarting your router.

What to say to your provider

Say: I am on FTTC. My service degrades at the same time every day, tested wired, and it is not a scheduled reboot. Please check for congestion on your network and confirm my sync rate.

Every light on the nbn connection device and what it means.

HFC: Hybrid Fibre Coaxial

Shared street capacity is a real and common cause here.

HFC shares capacity along a segment of your street. Everyone on that segment draws from the same pool, so when your neighbours get home and start streaming, the pool empties. This is the technology where evening contention is most likely to be a genuine explanation rather than a brush off.

That said, contention should show up as a slowdown, not as the connection dropping out entirely. If your HFC connection genuinely disconnects at the same time each evening, that is a different and more fixable fault, and it should not be written off as busy period behaviour.

What to try yourself

  1. Establish whether it slows or disconnects. Watch the Downstream and Upstream lights during the bad window. If they stay solid green while things crawl, it is capacity. If they stop being solid, it is a fault.
  2. Ask neighbours on the same service whether their evenings look like yours. On HFC this is genuinely diagnostic because you share the segment.
  3. Run a wired speed test at the worst hour and again late at night, and keep both numbers.
  4. Write down the date and time of every dropout and how long it lasted, for at least three days. A list of timestamps is the difference between a fault your provider can escalate to nbn and a phone call that ends in try restarting your router.

What to say to your provider

Say: I am on HFC. Please confirm whether my segment is congested in the evening peak, and if it is, when nbn plans to split or upgrade it.

If it is a disconnect rather than a slowdown, say: this is not a slowdown, the connection drops out entirely and the lights on the nbn box change. Please raise it as a fault.

Every light on the nbn connection box and what it means.

Fixed Wireless: nbn Fixed Wireless

Busy period contention is built into the technology, but there are limits to that excuse.

Every fixed wireless service on your tower shares the capacity of that cell. In the evening peak more people are using it, and speeds fall. This is the most contended of the five technologies by design, and nbn has historically published busy period performance for fixed wireless precisely because of it.

Where the excuse runs out is dropouts. Congestion makes a service slow. It should not make it disconnect. If your connection actually drops at the same hour every day, contention is not the explanation and you should not let the conversation end there.

What to try yourself

  1. Separate slow from dropped, and be precise about which you have. It changes who is responsible.
  2. Watch the Status and Outdoor Unit lights for about 60 seconds during the bad window, per nbn's own guidance, and note whether they cycle.
  3. Record speeds at the worst hour and in the early morning, so you have the size of the gap rather than an impression of it.
  4. Write down the date and time of every dropout and how long it lasted, for at least three days. A list of timestamps is the difference between a fault your provider can escalate to nbn and a phone call that ends in try restarting your router.

What to say to your provider

Say: I am on fixed wireless. Please tell me whether my cell is recorded as congested in the evening, and what my signal level is now compared with installation.

If it drops rather than slows, say so explicitly and ask for a fault to be raised. Contention does not disconnect a service.

Every light on the nbn connection box and what it means.

Then, whatever they tell you

Providers work from a script, and the script assumes you have not checked anything. Say this early and you skip most of it.

  • Ask them to raise a fault with nbn, and ask for the fault reference number. A fault that was never raised cannot be tracked, and this is where most calls quietly end.
  • Ask what the line is actually doing at their end right now, and whether they can see dropouts in their own logs. They usually can.
  • If they close it without fixing it, ask for the complaint to be escalated internally, and get the complaint reference in writing.

If it stays broken and they stop being useful, the Telecommunications Industry Ombudsman is free for you to use, and providers do respond to it. Here is how that works.

Before you touch anything

  • Do not go up a ladder or onto a roof. That includes fixed wireless antennas and dishes. nbn's own fixed wireless guide tells you to contact your provider rather than touch an outdoor unit mounted more than 2 metres off the ground. There is nothing you can fix up there that is worth a fall.
  • Do not open the nbn connection box, and do not touch the pit or the lead-in cable. That equipment belongs to nbn, not to you or your provider. Fibre terminations carry laser light that you cannot see and should not look into. Opening it can also end your service and leave you liable for the repair.
  • Leave the backup battery alone beyond what your provider's own script tells you. If you have the optional Power Supply with Battery Backup, follow your provider's instructions for it and nothing more.
  • Burning smell, scorch marks, or a modem too hot to touch: stop. Switch it off at the wall, unplug it, and do not plug it back in. Tell your provider it needs replacing. There is no troubleshooting step that comes before this.

Where this comes from

Every light state and every figure on this page comes from the sources below, each checked on 15 August 2026. Where a provider's guide disagrees with nbn's, the provider is describing their own hardware and you should follow theirs.

Related guides

While you are on the phone to them anyway

Most people only look hard at their telco account when something has gone wrong. Since you are already dealing with them, send the bill over. The audit is free, and we will tell you plainly where you are overpaying and what is worth challenging.

Get a free bill audit