Pipe calls for international player partners

Stuart Corner
Monday, 15 May 2006 19:31

IT Industry - Strategy

ASX listed Pipe Networks is looking for partners to provide innovative and value adding products and services that can exploit its metro optic fibre networks and Internet peering exchanges, and has issued a call for expressions of interest.
Managing director, Bevan Slattery said: "we believe there's more value for the company in opening its network than restricting it."  He said the EOI process was aimed at asking industry players and new entrants what they could do if they had access to two million users via Australia's largest peering fabric and over 80 million metres of fibre cores on Australia's third largest metro fibre network.

Pipe Networks claims to have over 85 customers and over 180 connections to its peering exchanges, including almost all of Australia's non-Tier 1 ISPs. Its peering infrastructure consists of sixteen peering points in six cities. All major peering points are connected to Pipe Networks' dark fibre and on nx10Gbps ethernet core network which the company says is able to support over 40 times the current bandwidth requirement.

It claims that approximately 30 percent of Australian content sites are accessible via its network, and that ISP customers have between them around two million users connected downstream from its east coast peering points.

"If it's innovative, attractive to the market, has a strong path to profitability and preferably, compliments our existing clients' service offerings, then we're interested in talking to them," Slattery said.

Potential service offerings identified in the EOI include: managed storage over Internet; broadcast video/pay TV over Internet, metro-ethernet services; metro-wireless mesh and point-to-point services; possible fibre-to-the-building (FttB) deployments for high-rise residential and office buildings; and VoIP gateway/interconnection services.

"Although we see a wide range of commercial opportunities to leverage our network infrastructure through this process, we are not planning on entering relationships with organisations that compete with our existing customer base," Slattery said. Also, Pipe does not intend to contribute significant funding to any project accepted.

"This process is about enhancing value for Pipe Networks and our customers – not about introducing products that would compete with our customers and erode value,"  according to Slattery.

"Opening our 'pipes' to the domestic and international market will enable us to exploit new commercial opportunities that enhance value for Pipe Networks and our customers, while allowing us to remain focussed on our core business."

Under the EOI process, pipe Networks' management will conduct private briefing sessions in Brisbane, Sydney, Chicag, and potentially Europe during early June 2006, with Expressions of Interest due to close on 9 June, 2006.