LinuxSA Mailing list archives

  From: Simon Hackett <simon@internode.com.au>
  To  : Daryl Pilkington <u3232@home.dialix.com>
        <Linuxsa@linuxsa.org.au>
  Date: Tue, 24 Apr 2001 08:55:58 +0930

Re: ADSL

At 7:09 AM +1000 24/4/01, Daryl Pilkington wrote:
>Hi Simon,
>
>I've read your ADSL spiel.
>It is the clearest, no-nonsense, documentation I've ever read.

Sincerely appreciate the kind words - I did take a lot, lot, lot of 
trouble over trying to make it that way. That's (part of) why it took 
such a long time for us to get this out of the door. I really, really 
wanted to have something special to offer, not just to be Telstra 
under a different name - that would have been just pointless.

>Thought of working for the Government?

I'm not sure that they'd want me. I keep telling the truth too often :)

>Why is it all the smart people live in Adelaide?

Beats me. The less smart ones move away, I guess.  Kind of self-fulfilling :)

>When will you be able to provide a Sydney ADSL service?

I'm considering that now. Technically it's no problem, frankly the 
issue has to do with the economics of startup overheads when 
interfacing to the Telstra 'Wholesale' Copper Line/DSLAM 'Network'. 
i.e. there's a substantial burn rate until the customer count becomes 
substantial. The first customer is <really> expensive for us to put 
in :) The next only marginally less so, and so on up to at least 
customer number <several hundred> at which point it levels out 
somewhat.

I'm ok (just) with that burn rate in Adelaide because it's where we 
'live', and I believe we'll get support to make the service pay its 
way.

Internode does have Sydney and a Melbourne Dial/ISDN/ISDN-DoV/Voice 
PoPs - but as yet I've not put any ADSL interfacing in there.

What I'm looking at in Sydney right now is the potential of a 
reciprocal arrangement with an existing ADSL player there, who 
doesn't have any Adelaide presence, so that we effectively wind up 
wholesaling each others' services, as a startup mechanism.

You see, the problem is that since our physical presence in Sydney 
doesn't extend beyond the PoP we have, our startup overheads in 
Sydney would be all the worse because (other than you!) nobody knows 
about us there (yet) - so on top of the economic overhead at a 
technical level, there's the economic overhead in terms of marketing 
as well. Essentially it'd be a circa $150k gamble, and I've got some 
other (huge!) things we're working on here where I'd rather spend 
that money right now.

If you could find 200 ADSL customers who would buy given our Adelaide 
proposition, I'd fire up ADSL in Sydney in a heartbeat - but that's 
quite an ask :)

Simon


---
Simon Hackett, Technical Director, Internode Systems Pty Ltd
31 York St [PO Box 284, Rundle Mall], Adelaide, SA 5000 Australia
Email: simon@internode.com.au  Web: http://www.on.net
Phone: +61-8-8223-2999          Fax: +61-8-8223-1777

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