M2 connects first NBN customer via Telstra Wholesale

Stuart Corner
Wednesday, 06 July 2011 11:14

IT Industry - Development

M2 Telecommunications Group (ASX: MTU) has become the first retail service provider to connect an NBN customer via Telstra Wholesale, which is the first provider to offer products and services over the NBN that can be re-sold to consumers.

M2 says the connection for a customer of its subsidiary, Southern Cross Telco, in Armidale will be the first of many NBN connections via Telstra Wholesale across the mainland trial sites: Brunswick in Victoria, Townsville in Queensland, Minnamurra in NSW and Willunga in South Australia.

"As part of the trial Telstra Wholesale will provide M2 with a resale broadband solution, which is expected to deliver speeds of between 12Mbps and up to 100Mbps over NBN Co's fibre network. Telstra Wholesale is the first provider in the market providing products and services over the NBN that can be re-sold to consumers."

M2's managing director and CEO, Vaughan Bowen, said: "It is our intention to offer NBN services to those of our customers located in the areas which fall within the trial deployment footprints and to extend our NBN offering to a wider cross-section of our customer base, both retail and wholesale, as NBN continues its national rollout over the coming months and years."

According to Telstra Wholesale's acting group managing director, Glenn Osborne, "Telstra Wholesale's intention is to provide a suite of value-added products, services and support to the industry in an NBN world and we are actively talking to our customers about the types of services they will need to support their business in the transition to a fibre world.

In addition to Telstra, Nextgen Networks, Platform Networks and AAPT have announced their intent to act as intermediaries between NBN Co and retail services providers. They will resell access to the NBN bundled with their own connectivity to enable retail service providers to offer services to end users via a single contract and, in some cases a single point of interconnection.