ispOne sub-wholesales Telstra ADSL2+ as Optus falters

ispOne has inked a new agreement with Telstra that will enable it to sub-wholesale ADSL2+ services to its customer base of 150 ISPs.

The agreement, which was inked several months ago, will give ispOne access to 1,400 exchanges in total, representing ‘around 63 percent’ of total DSLAM reach in Australia, according to managing director Zac Swindells.

It will also enable the 150 ISPs to keep larger players like BigPond and Internode ‘in check’ in the predominately regional markets they serve, Swindells told iTnews.

“Anyone with an open agreement with Telstra knows there’s enough margin in there to compete without going ridiculous,” said Swindells.

“Instead of competing on price like in metro areas, our ISPs can make the type of margins they’re supposed to on broadband.

“We’ve had the product for a few months now and the response has been out of this world. We’ve had ISPs’ business grow by 50 percent in the last month because people are willing to pay for a good ADSL2+ product,” he said.

The sub-wholesaler has an existing ADSL2+ agreement with Optus but Swindells said the product ‘never really took off’.

“It’s a totally different product set [to Telstra], it’s unconditioned local loop-based versus spectrum shared, and it was a complex and longer term sale,” said Swindells.

“I think it works well for the business market, but the network expansion hasn’t really been there. Optus have focused on expanding their 3G product [instead].”

ispOne claimed that over 80 percent of its ISP customers ‘already have a dozen or more customers [of their own] on ADSL2+’.

Country Energy, ACT-based Grapevine and the NSW community telco Southern Phone are three of ispOne’s major ADSL2+ customers.

ispOne will now focus efforts on establishing wholesale agreements in New Zealand to create a trans-Tasman services offering, said Swindells.