Let the broadband price war begin
By Megan McAuliffe, ZDNet Australia,
April 12, 2001
URL: zdnetasia.com
Australia's second largest telco Cable & Wireless Optus could spark a broadband price war with the rollout of wholesale DSL to business customers.
"Now Optus has moved into the market with their wholesale DSL prices, we can expect in 12 months time a broadband connection into business or homes to be around the AU$50 mark," IDMedia Broadband Content Producer Scott Stubbes told ZDNet Australia.
Stubbes predicts international companies such as US-based MCI Worldcomm will also come on board over the next 12 months, further promoting a broadband price war downunder.
C&W Optus subsidiary XYZed has announced its arrival into the wholesale DSL market, rolling out its network in capital cities.
DSL technology transforms a traditional phone line into a high-speed digital link to provide homes and small businesses with broadband Internet access.
XYZed claims it will be able to provide business grade, high-speed broadband access to 75 percent of businesses spread across the country.
The network consists of 40 exchanges in Sydney, 28 in Melbourne, 13 in Brisbane, 11 in Perth, nine in Adelaide and two in the Australian Capital Territory.
"Many business which have not had access to fibre have been forced to pay the high cost of leased lines or ISDN services. For medium and smaller sized business these services are often prohibitively priced," XYZed Managing Director Stephe Wilks said.
The telco claims its DSL services will be "significantly cheaper" than existing standard Telstra high-speed services.
Construction of the network began in April last year and commercial services were launched in September, according to C&W Optus.
XYZed already has a number of retail carriers on board, which are selling to the end-users.
According to Stubbes, the 56 kilobit modem dial-up to the Internet is slowly dying with more media being produced for the broadband spectrum.
"Users want to access the rich media content, especially in rural areas for distant learning," he said.
"We need a decent reliable connection above a 56k modem."
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