Australian broadband

Some interesting differences with Australian broadband compared to the UK,
in a supplement from The Age dated 22/7/03:

1. "...June was the first month in many when Telstra did not have to pay out
against its customer service level guarantees to Digital Subscriber Line
customers...other providers have measured Telstra's performance in recent
times at 97.5 per cent, equating to four hours down time per week per
customer, not including scheduled outages...in January and February of this
year alone, Telstra was forced to pay $2 million in rebates to...customers
suffering from unexpected network outages..."

I haven't heard of SLAs for DSL customers here, but perhaps they are
available for businesses, in which case does anyone know about pay out
levels?

2. "...ISDN is accessible...as far as 20 kilometers from the exchange..."
which if true means they must use repeaters, not generally used here. It
makes sense due to the "urban sprawl" in Oz, though.

3. "...Telstra quotes McKinsey & Co data, which shows Australia is well
advanced in terms of broadband reach with about 90 per cent of households
being able to access broadband internet...". Interesting in view of the
urban sprawl, although a very high proportion of the Australian population
live in cities compared with here.

4. "...the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission defines broadband
as being any high-speed connection greater than 200kbps [sic] over a mix of
media - less than half Britain's benchmark...". In fact there's an ad for a
256/64 ADSL connection with "unlimited downloads & uploads" for $A70 monthly
on the same page.

5. "...Bright Telecommunications, based in Perth...will roll-out Australia's
first fibre-to-the-home...offering residential and CBD [central business
district] customers the same levels of functionality...delivering a
dedicated 100Mbps Ethernet link".

No indication of prices. I wonder when we'll start to see this here?

--
Phil McKerracher
www.mckerracher.org

I have some friends in OZ, and although the price of DSL isn't that much
different to here they have a 3gig (yes three!) download cap per month, go
over that and you have to pay extra per meg :-(

Phil McKerracher wrote:
> Some interesting differences with Australian broadband compared to
> the UK, in a supplement from The Age dated 22/7/03:
>
> 1. "...June was the first month in many when Telstra did not have to
> pay out against its customer service level guarantees to Digital
> Subscriber Line customers...other providers have measured Telstra's
> performance in recent times at 97.5 per cent, equating to four hours
> down time per week per customer, not including scheduled outages...in
> January and February of this year alone, Telstra was forced to pay $2
> million in rebates to...customers suffering from unexpected network
> outages..."
>
> I haven't heard of SLAs for DSL customers here, but perhaps they are
> available for businesses, in which case does anyone know about pay out
> levels?
>
> 2. "...ISDN is accessible...as far as 20 kilometers from the
> exchange..." which if true means they must use repeaters, not
> generally used here. It makes sense due to the "urban sprawl" in Oz,
> though.
>
> 3. "...Telstra quotes McKinsey & Co data, which shows Australia is
> well advanced in terms of broadband reach with about 90 per cent of
> households being able to access broadband internet...". Interesting
> in view of the urban sprawl, although a very high proportion of the
> Australian population live in cities compared with here.
>
> 4. "...the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission defines
> broadband as being any high-speed connection greater than 200kbps
> [sic] over a mix of media - less than half Britain's benchmark...".
> In fact there's an ad for a 256/64 ADSL connection with "unlimited
> downloads & uploads" for $A70 monthly on the same page.
>
> 5. "...Bright Telecommunications, based in Perth...will roll-out
> Australia's first fibre-to-the-home...offering residential and CBD
> [central business district] customers the same levels of
> functionality...delivering a dedicated 100Mbps Ethernet link".
>
> No indication of prices. I wonder when we'll start to see this here?

--

(¯`·._.· All Outgoing Mail Scanned With Norton Anti-Virus 2003 ·._.·´¯)

> No indication of prices. I wonder when we'll start to see this here?

Think the bigger issue is that the UK telcos have been stung by 3G spectrum
fees and the fact that many punters simply aren't interested to go for
broadband. With UK plc only just getting around to aggregate the public
service demand the current payback for BT alone barely justifies the current
BB rollout, before concerning themselves with bandwidth hikes on current
ADSL technology.

In Tokyo, they're starting to deploy VDSL stuff, I believe, at 26Mbit/s to
consumers. The other key difference is that true broadband content is far
more prevalent in SE Asia than over here. Given Gordo B's tax hole right
now, I don't see how we're going to progress significantly for a while yet.
Look at the trouble involved with converting Milton Keynes ...

"Phil McKerracher" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote:

> Some interesting differences with Australian broadband compared to the UK,
> in a supplement from The Age dated 22/7/03:
>
> 1. "...June was the first month in many when Telstra did not have to pay
out
> against its customer service level guarantees to Digital Subscriber Line
> customers...other providers have measured Telstra's performance in recent
> times at 97.5 per cent, equating to four hours down time per week per
> customer, not including scheduled outages...in January and February of
this
> year alone, Telstra was forced to pay $2 million in rebates to...customers
> suffering from unexpected network outages..."
>
> I haven't heard of SLAs for DSL customers here, but perhaps they are
> available for businesses, in which case does anyone know about pay out
> levels?
>

I'm not aware of any ISP offering compensation for downtime here, but I've
also never heard of an ISP being down as much as 4 hours/week either.

--

Martin

On 31/8/03 9:55 pm, in article 9et4b.651$(E-Mail Removed),
"Basil" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote:

> In Tokyo, they're starting to deploy VDSL stuff, I believe, at 26Mbit/s to
> consumers. The other key difference is that true broadband content is far
> more prevalent in SE Asia than over here.


Not forgetting their population density is about 10 times ours and the
majority of people live in high rise blocks.

Give me a house with a garden and 512k, to VDSL and a rabbit hutch !

"Phil McKerracher" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message
news:CBs4b.1481$(E-Mail Removed)...
> I haven't heard of SLAs for DSL customers here, but perhaps they are
> available for businesses, in which case does anyone know about pay out
> levels?

BT's SLA's for ADSL are at
http://www.serviceview.bt.com/list/c...d.boo/1440.htm

Whether ISP's offer the Enhanced option to end users is a different
matter...

Regards
Sunil