Australian Internet industry's debt to AARNet

Stuart Corner
Friday, 27 November 2009 03:02

Opinion and Analysis

AARNet, the Australian Academic Research Network has published a history entitled "AARNet – 20 years of the Internet in Australia" That's a bit of misnomer; it's really the history of AARNet, but it provides some fascinating insights into how AARNet kick-started the Internet in Australia.

As the author, Glenda Korporaal, said at the launch yesterday, "The history of the Internet in Australia remains to be written." AARNet was, however crucial to the development of the commercial ISP industry in Australia. It was created as a network for the exclusive use of the Academic community to link the various institutions with each other and with others overseas, particularly in the US where the Internet was well established.

However "In May 1994 AARNet was opened up to 'value added resellers' or Internet service providers (ISPs). The resellers were charged for access to permanent links on a fixed cost basis. In turn they typically charged retail customers for 'dial up' access on an hourly basis." Those early players included Internode, OzEmail, iiNet and others. Thus was Australia's commercial Internet industry born.

However AARNet had been set up as a non-commercial enterprise overseen by a committee of vice chancellors. They, and it, soon found themselves struggling to meet demand and requiring additional resources. The solution was to sell the whole thing, along with the 300 commercial customers to Telstra.

And this transfer produced rapid learning in Telstra, an organisation which at the time had very little expertise in or understanding of the Internet, according to the history. "The AARNet business represented a wealth of knowledge and expertise acquired in the first five years of the Internet in Australia which was now being transferred to Telstra to help it get up the learning curve."

Not only was the knowledge transferred, so were the problems which had precipitated the move. "It soon emerged that Telstra was not ready to cope with the large customer base represented by AARNet members and their substantial, rapidly growing network traffic."

AARNet then went to tender for a new backbone network and chose Optus, which, like Telstra faced a steep learning curve. Then part-owned by US telco Bell South it was able to draw on their expertise in the Internet, but Bell South sold out to Cable & Wireless of the UK, "The US experts went home. AARNet again faced the problem that its technical people were a lot more skilled with the Internet than its network supplier."


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