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Telecommunications Altnet promises affordable bandwidth for regional Australia
Telecommunications Altnet promises affordable bandwidth for regional Australia | Altnet promises affordable bandwidth for regional Australia |
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| by Stuart Corner | |
| Tuesday, 05 September 2006 | |
  
Altnet is a subsidiary of Rural Bash, (Broadband and Application Showcase) and according to Rural Bash founder and Altnet managing director, Robert Brand, the high cost of backhaul and inter-town bandwidth has frustrated Rural Bash in its attempts to facilitate the development of alternative service providers in regional Australia. "A number of service providers have said they can't make a buck in regional Australia, that there is no business case. And the cost of backhaul is at the heart of it," Brand said." We have had quite a few projects that just did not hold water when the cost of backhaul was added in." Altnet claims that rural inter-city bandwidth costs between five and 20 times that of equivalent intercapital services. Brand told iTWire that Altnet would overcome this price barrier by buying capacity in bulk from established carriers. "We believe there is an opportunity buying even through other large wholesale carriers." He said that Altnet was in final negotiation with one particular carrier. The company hopes to start offering services later this year. It will initially offer simply layer 2 connectivity via a gigabit ethernet interface using fibre, microwave or satellite capacity. Layer 3 access will be launched soon after. Later, Altnet intends to add value to its network by building PoPs in appropriate locations and grooming the data to customer requirements. Potential customers (ISPs, CSPs and enterprises) are invited to register their interest on Altnet's website (www.altnet.com.au) and the company says it will concentrate on servicing towns with the greatest needs or where a solution can be easily implemented. Brand said the demand register was essential to making the Altnet business viable. "If we can piece together as little as 50Mbps in a town we know we will have a very successful business." He added: "We are very averse to taking risk. This is not a case of build it and they will come. We are making sure there is a business case first. And by lowering the risk we will be able to offer lower prices....We seriously encourage customers to tell us what they would like to pay for their links so that we can understand the pricing barriers that they are facing." The Altnet network will be based on Cisco gear. The company said it was "working with Cisco to provide an industry leading, quality of service enabled, Internet Protocol network...designed around Cisco switches, 7200 routers and other networking technologies." |
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