Brisbane PIPE widens

Brisbane-based internet exchange provider PIPE Networks has opened four new carrier neutral telecommunications housing facilities and five new interconnection points on the back of increased broadband demand.

Steve Baxter, director at PIPE Networks, said the company had acquired a million users and was switching more than 150 MB a day through the Brisbane exchange alone, up from the 3 MB each day when PIPE began offering Internet peering and interconnection services about a year ago.

"90 percent of our locations are connected with at least 2x1000 MB a second circuits and we are in talks with hardware vendors to increase this capacity to 10 GB a second," Baxter said.

He said PIPE anticipates its east coast peering points will each do more than 200 MB a second and a national total of 1000 MB a second by the end of the year.

"A Gigabit might sound like a lot and it is, but if just five percent of Australia's broadband users logged onto a video-streaming event there would be an instant demand for up to five gigabits a second of capacity," Baxter said.

He said PIPE had installed dark fibre networks to interconnect its peering points within each city, a move which he claimed would deliver Australia's first common scaleable and fixed-cost infrastructure to deliver those services. The dark fibre was a "radical step" that would allow PIPE to "light up" particular Gigabit circuits on demand, he added.

Baxter said that reducing ISP traffic charges and fixed-cost access for the next generation of broadband products was becoming paramount.

PIPE is promoting its services to ASPs, particularly those offering online gaming and video-on-demand services, as cost-saving.

The company includes among its customers such ISPs as Primus, Powertel, UeComm, TPGi, iiNet, Netspace, Internode, Pacific Internet and content providers like WebCentral and Hostworks.