Below is a comment from Andrew McLennan who runs our only local ISP - Scoastnet
I find Andrew's comments interesting and admit that some of my attitudes toward Telstra are coloured by my conversations with Andrew in the past. Telstra use their dominant position as the supplier of the hardware at the end of the line, the wires into your house and so on, to make life expensive and difficult for their competitors.
Andrew seems to think it will be a while before Telstra has any competition to provide speeds in the ADSL2+ range and I am sure he is right. But I bet the availability of these higher speeds around the country will work to drive down the price of lower ADSL speeds from most providers. Of course we still haven't solved the problem of our Mulligrubbers who can't get Broadband yet. Finger crossed for you.
Here's Andrew's comments
Hi Matt
It should of course be noted that I have an obvious bias in this situation that may well show up below ;-)
ADSL2 is already active in the Ulladulla exchange but only available from Big Pond for the immediate future.
The main reason Telstra has refused to enable this previously (the hardware has been there for a couple of years as far as I know) was that they did not want to allow anyone else access to the ADSL2 service in any form and the new Government has apparently agreed to this in order to get Telstra to turn it on at all.
The Government and ACCC claim they have only repeated the previous position that the ADSL network is not declared and there is currently no case to do so.
This is exactly the same statements that the previous Government made but Telstra seems to think the current Government is less likely to do this for whatever reason.
One of the primary reasons for declaring a network (so the ACCC can regulate access) is anti-competitive behavior from the network unit owner that is detrimental to consumers (it is consumers that count in this context, not the industry in general) so this may be the case at some point but Telstra appear to have decided that it is unlikely for the moment.
The ACCC has so far NOT said anything to indicate they intend to try to declare the ADSL (or ADSL2) network nor that Telstra should be forced to provide ADSL2 wholesale access in some form.
There is NO wholesale ADSL2 access at all from Telstra in any form so until this changes, there will be nothing except Big Pond for ADSL2 in this area.
A sad day for competition in the ISP/Telco industry but it has allowed the new Government to claim at least partial delivery of an election promise to get higher speed broadband available to more people and to do it immediately without spending anything on it directly.
It is a shame that political expedience seems to have overridden interests of the consumers and the rest of the industry and this decision will cause the ADSL2 prices in most of the country to remain unnecessarily high and restricted to Big Pond customers for at least the immediate future.
I do sort of expect a wholesale product at some point but this may well be 12 months or more (if at all) before it is imposed in some form as Telstra apparently do not intend to do it on their own and the regulators claim to currently have no plans to force this in any form.
This does of course remain to be seen and Telstra may announce a wholesale product at any point if it suits them.
I would be unsurprised to see this at about the same time as an announcement from Telstra that they have reached an agreement with the regulators (the ACCC) to build their FTTN network with protection from any imposed wholesale access requirement.
It is unlikely that anyone else will deploy an ADSL2 DSLAM in this exchange as the costs are high (up to $150K-$250K to install a DSLAM worth less than $10K)and there is not enough population on the exchange to justify this type of cost for other carriers at the moment.
It does not of course cost anything like this for Telstra to do it as the vast majority of this installation estimate is Telstra charges and legal costs.
ADSL2 in its current offering from Big Pond is rather expensive for most users unless they are rich or have a commercial requirement but it is at least possible now.
It is also worth noting that a lot of the users in this area are more than 1.5KM (cable run, not street distance) from the exchange and may only get up to 8mbps which is currently available from any ISP (including Scoastnet) using ADSL.
The quality of the cable run as well as the distance to the premises will affect the speeds available to some users with ADSL2 as it does with ADSL in the 8Mbps speed bracket.
Anyone considering ADSL2 (or the ADSL 8Mbps) accounts should make very sure they understand the way the account works and possible costs as some accounts have very high excess rates and the capacity of the faster connections makes the possible bills in the thousands of dollars for some accounts.
Regards
Andrew McLennan
Scoastnet Pty Ltd
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