Telstra has been fined millions of dollars and ordered to pay millions more in compensation for misleading almost 9000 customers on its budget internet provider.

The Federal Court has slapped the country's biggest telco with an $18 million fine for moving 8897 Belong customers onto a lower-speed NBN plan in late 2020 without telling them.

While the new plan had the same maximum download speed, the maximum upload speed was halved from 40 to 20Mbps.

On top of the fine, Telstra has been ordered to repay $15 to each customer for every month they were on the lower speed plan – a total compensation of more than $2.3 million for the telco.

"The $18 million penalty sends a strong message to all businesses that they cannot mislead consumers by making changes to key aspects of a service without

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