Telstra InfraCo opens up telco's own fibre network

Telstra is opening access to unlit fibre in its own national network, the first move made by the new manager of its infrastructure assets, InfraCo.

InfraCo fibre executive Kathryn Jones said the “massive” offering saw “250,000km of untapped potential” being opened to users other than Telstra itself for the first time.

“With more than 250 pre-defined paths available right now in six state capitals, connected to 68 metro data centres, 78 NBN points of interconnect and two cable landing stations, opening up our fixed network to customers in this way is a profound step in unlocking untapped value in our network assets,” Jones said in a statement.

“We will soon expand the availability and use cases of dark fibre across the nation, beyond just metro locations.”

The telco is targeting network operators and service providers, “such as global carriers, data centre operators, internet service providers (ISPs) and over the top providers” with the offering.

Its product launch comes on the back of investments by a number of other operators in high-capacity fibre networks, including the HyperOne project backed by telecommunications entrepreneur Bevan Slattery.

Other players, such as Vocus - which handed down its half-year results today - also have "frankly underutilised" fibre assets that they are also in-market selling access to.

"In relation to the overall landscape, it is absolutely interesting to look at the number of announcements over the last few weeks on potential fibre projects or new fibre launches, and then Telstra's announcement this morning," Vocus group managing director and CEO Kevin Russell told financial analysts.

"We do recognise the noise in the marketplace now probably says that the market opportunity is growing and there's appetite to invest. 

"For us, the market opportunity is quite simple. We understand where we play, we understand the market trends.

"I feel pretty confident and comfortable in terms of our ability to execute our plans for the period ahead."