Telstra has revealed the addition of almost one million new mobile services in the six months to December 2011, but Sensis revenues plummeted 24 percent in 12 months.
TransACT, which operates primarily VDSL and VDSL2 services over its own networks in the ACT, has been rolling out FTTH on greenfield developments since early 2008 using GPON gear supplied by Alcatel-Lucent. However it presently offers services at a maximum of 30Mbps downstream and 10Mbps upstream, matching what it offers over its VDSL2 network. It operates all its networks on an open access model and users can presently choose their Internet services from eleven ISPs.
TransACT's acting CEO, Tony Allen, told iTWire that TransACT had decided to go the higher speeds in part to showcase its FTTH network's capabilities. "We have one of the best fibre networks in Australia and it's about time we showed what it can do." The 100Mbps plans will be available from 4 September.
Allen added, "We are the only provider of fibre to the premise to greenfield suburbs in the ACT. Our policy today is to do fibre to greenfield sites only but we are planning to retrofit some of brownfield [VDSL] sites with FTTH. However, that has not been authorised by the board yet. It's partly to get a feel of the costs of doing FTTH in a brownfield area. We want to stay ahead of the game."
Allen said that TransACT at present has VDSL2 passing about 10,000 homes in the ACT and about 6.5 thousand medium density units under negotiation. "We have about 1000 homes passed by fibre and we are contracted to do very many more than that, but we can only rollout as fast as places are built...We are definitely one of the largest players in FTTP in Australia." Without any other fixed network, Allen said take up of services over the fibre was in excess of 90 percent.
He added: "There is no doubt that customers prefer homes with fibres. There are a couple of greenfield sites where the developer did not put in fibre and I believe they are not as popular with home buyers. Anyone doing a development today and not putting in fibre has rocks in their head."
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