Westnet spends $10m on new DSLAMs

 

Western Australia and NSW regions first to benefit.

ISP iiNet has announced plans to spend around $10 million deploying ADSL2+ DSLAMs in regional NSW and Western Australia, with more states also set to benefit from the rollout shortly.

The broadband services, branded as 'Westnet', will be made available in regional areas the ISP previously serviced by reselling services on Telstra ports.

iiNet bought ISP Westnet for $81 million in 2008.

An iiNet spokesman told iTnews that existing customers would likely experience "higher quotas and better deals" when they are moved across to the iiNet infrastructure.

The network upgrade project represented iiNet's largest ever regional deployment of ADSL2+ infrastructure.

The Hunter, North Coast and South Coast regions of NSW – encompassing 120,000 homes – and the West Australian towns of Geraldton, Kalgoorlie, Bluff Point and Katanning would be first to receive the new equipment.

In NSW, the rollout was expected to see DSLAMs located in Charlestown, Corrimal, Goonellabah, Goulburn, Grafton, Hamilton, Maitland, New Lambton, Nowra, Unanderra, Wallsend and Warilla.

The rollout was expected to be completed inside six months.

iiNet's spokesman told iTnews that other states, including Victoria, would be included in separate phases of the DSLAM rollout project.

Copyright © iTnews.com.au . All rights reserved.


Westnet spends $10m on new DSLAMs
"telstra and optus are heavily mobile focused, and additionally both already offer 100meg cable and neither have experienced vast influxes of bandwidth hungry customers. both will be thankful to ..."
By djzort
 
 
 
Comments: 5
Digger11
Jan 11, 2011 1:09 PM
Shhhh , don't tell iinet about the NBN being built .
umbria
Jan 11, 2011 4:07 PM
What this actually means is that Westnet will pick up thousands of new ADSL revenue-generating customers over the 3-year depreciation life cycle of the DSLAMs, then migrate them to become Westnet fibre customers (on NBN fibre) when it arrives. Other cashed-up ISPs are probably looking for similar high-growth districts as these to get more customers onto their books, for both short- and long-term revenue.
djzort
Jan 11, 2011 10:20 PM
Indeed, this is a smart move and is consistent with iinets focus on fixed line products. Whilst Optus and Telstra battle it out for wireless, iinet are quietly consuming the market. Profitable, non-fussy, Low churn customers will tend to stay with their first provider. $10mill on some dslams will pay themselves off, before considering the cost of winning these customers in a 'fair' playing field. NBN being 'fair' apparently.
Digger11
Jan 13, 2011 2:21 PM
djzort - totally wrong, bad strategy iiNet.

Optus and Telstra are building up huge war chests to grab cusotmer in the switch to NBN.
How about FREE foxtel for a year, unlimited BB for 6 months ???
Do you really think a cusomter will stay with iiNet because they were connected to one of their DSLAMs ???? Absolutely not - customers will take the new best offer on the new sparkling Fibre network.

T and O will probably wipe iiNet off the planet - especially if iiNet they have wasted all of their cash putting in redundant technology.
I suppose this occurs when a company is run by an Engineer and not a businessman.
djzort
Jan 13, 2011 10:49 PM
telstra and optus are heavily mobile focused, and additionally both already offer 100meg cable and neither have experienced vast influxes of bandwidth hungry customers.

both will be thankful to sell broadband as a VAS to mobile services thanks to tax payer funded infrastructure, but will continue to focus their energies on capitalizing the duopoly in the higher margin mobile market.
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