iiNet selling 4,000 BoBs per month

Renai LeMay
Monday, 22 February 2010 15:34

IT Industry - Strategy

Tier two ISP iiNet today revealed it was selling about 4,000 units per month of its flagship BoB combination ADSL router and internet telephony handset since it launched the device in mid-August 2009.

The device '” manufactured by Belkin '” has sold over 21,000 units to date, iiNet said this morning in documents associated with its financial results. And BoB '” which allows iiNet customers to use a single device for all of its ADSL routing, in-house networking and telephony needs '” was linking in well with iiNet's product line.

iiNet chief executive Michael Malone (pictured) described the handset as a 'resounding success'. BoB represented 85 percent of all modem sales by iiNet over the period, and 75 percent of customers who bought one of the devices also bought the company's Naked DSL offering, which does not require a traditional bundled telephony line.

In a wider sense it was a good six months for iiNet to December 31, despite the legal distractions the company faced in its lawsuit with the Australian Federation Against Copyright Theft, which was settled early this month in the ISP's favour.

iiNet's revenue grew 11.3 percent in the period to reach $228.08 million, a figure that was up 11.3 percent on the same six months in 2008. Profit after tax was also up (6.3 percent to $12.13 million) and the company has declared an interim fully franked dividend of 3c.

iiNet revealed it had more than 300,000 subscribers connected to iiNet's own ADSL network (as opposed to customers using the wholesale infrastructure of other carriers), and iiNet continued to see growth in the period of its Naked DSL product, with subscriber numbers up 30 percent to 86,905.

The company had total internet subscriber services of 799,817, a figure that had grown 5 percent, and it now had a total of 19,100 customers from its Westnet acquisition on its own network.