LinuxSA Mailing list archives

  From: Simon Hackett <simon@internode.com.au>
  To  : Michael Kratz <michael_kratz@hotmail.com>
        <newton@atdot.dotat.org>
  Date: Fri, 29 Jun 2001 22:16:34 +0930

Re: Telstra Broadband & Multi-Users

There are two distinct things at issue here.

#1. Telstra's world view (which turns into their charging model 
basis) cuts the country up into 66 'Call Collection Areas'. They 
aren't hugely logical in their arrangement, but each is a (mostly) 
contiguous geographical area.

#2. Within each CCA, Telstra have a notional 'middle' (I forget the 
term they use for it), which is where the calls from that CCA get 
notionally switched between that CCA and other CCA's. For instance, 
in the Adelaide CCA, it's Adelaide. In the CCA that covers Whyalla, 
Port Pirie and Port Augusta (amongst other things), that network 
'core' point is Port Augusta, as it happens. And so on.

#3. If you want to be an ADSL wholesaler through Telstra, you have to 
pick up the ADSL traffic for a CCA either from the Telstra defined 
traffic collection point in that CCA (as above) or from any other 
CCA's collection point if you want to pay Telstra for the additional 
wide area transit costs as well as the inherent exorbitant ADSL 
Wholesale fees.

#4. Not withstanding -all- of the above, Telstra make a business 
decision set in terms of which towns in the country that they wish to 
"ADSL enable" exchanges for. My guestimate is that they're on a path 
to do it for all towns of > circa 10,000 population, but I don't know 
that for sure.

I -do- know that Whyalla is slated for being ADSL enabled by Telstra 
around about now (though they always reserve their option to 
completely change their mind at any time)

For various reasons, we (Internode) have already got some bandwidth 
fed up into Port Augusta of sufficient grunt to sustain ADSL to the 
CCA concerned. But there is currently no business case for us, to 
justify paying the huge minimum annual costs for ADSL access to that 
CCA.

I don't have any idea if any other carriers or ISP's have been mad 
enough to buy wholesale access to Telstra's ADSL offering in the Port 
Augusta CCA (including Whyalla). I doubt it. I (amongst others) are 
actively making representations to the ACCC to force Telstra to act 
on the pricing issue (as direct appeals to Telstra in this respect 
have yielded the usual lack of interest in making any changes). 
That's the best we can do right now.

So while, actually, ADSL access via wholesale -does- include all 
three cities, the issue is that Telstra have only chosen to schedule 
Whyalla to be exchange-level enabled for ADSL at this time out of 
those three. So, yep, guess what, the only entity that gets the 
needed economy of scale is the one that already owns the road.

---

However, as a separate issue - actually ISDN isn't as expensive as 
you might think, if you buy it using the 'residential' ISDN tarrif 
and find an ISP able to support the 'data over voice' access method. 
This gets you $0.18 untimed 64k ISDN data calls (including two at 
once for 128k if you like) as part of a circa $38 per month line 
rental (for two lines, including the magic box that lets you plug in 
two phone/faxes at the same time as a Traverse NetJet card to do the 
ISDN part).

See http://www.traverse.com.au/Australia/html/dov.html

and also

http://www.traverse.com.au/Australia/html/sa.html

For more information.

Cheers,
   Simon

At 9:30 PM +0930 29/6/01, Michael Kratz wrote:
>>ISPs who use Telstra's wholesale ADSL offering purchase access in
>>geographical regions.
>>
>>So what I should have said was, "If that says you can get ADSL, you can
>>actually get it through any provider who is servicing your geographical
>>region, not just Telstra."  Apologies for the lack of specicifity, I was
>>lulled by the fact that most of the active participants on this list are
>>in the Adelaide metro area.
>>
>>The regions are pretty large - Metropolitan Adelaide is one, for example.
>
>So in the country how big are the regions, ie. say if you wanted it 
>in the region of whyalla, how far would that get you, would that 
>cover the entire iron triangle....
>
>What I am getting at here is that I know some businesses in whyalla 
>that want business grade ADSL connections, the main whyalla exchange 
>is now ADSL capable, the sh*t thing is is that Bigpond direct ADSL 
>is absolutely stupidly expensive, and is not available in Whyalla 
>yet but is 'being considered' by telstra... the users that we want 
>to sign up are people that want something faster than a modem 
>connection but ISDN is too expensive, otherwise I just would have 
>used BPD modem connections...
>
>So what is the likelyhood in the future of other ISPs (yes.... IPA) 
>of extending into the secondary cities. I have already heard that it 
>is rather expensive, thats why I wanted to know how big the regions 
>are, are there any webpages on telstras site which show the region 
>borders?? so for example if the region covers the iron triangle it 
>might prove profitable, 3 large cities that are bandwidth hungry all 
>in one zone.... hmmm... somehow I don't think telstra would be that 
>stupid though.
>
>Cheers,
>
>
>Michael
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---
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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