Optus has become one of the first wholesalers to offer HFC (hybrid fibre coaxial) access to the NBN. At the same time it has introduced more flexible interconnection options for its wholesale customers.
Optus' Residential Broadband over NBN (RBBoNBN) service is already used by companies such as SpinTel as a way of gaining access to all 121 NBN points of interconnect (POIs) at an economically viable price.
(The large number of POIs was a contentious issue – the original plan was for just 14 which would have helped smaller ISPs, but the interests of large players, who had already established their own networks around the country, prevailed.)
RBBoNBN access to the POIs is provided via eight Optus data centres in Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane and Perth. A ninth centre is planned in Adelaide.
Wholesale customers can now choose state-based, national or hybrid aggregation models, giving them delivering greater flexibility.
{loadposition stephen08}"This means wholesale customers can realise improved efficiencies, and offer lower latency for end customers, for example a WA-based wholesale end user will experience better latency from a WA-based data centre, rather than one previously based in Sydney, due to the data centre's proximity to the end customer," said Optus Wholesale head of marketing and strategy John Castro.
"We see significant opportunity for our business in the wholesale NBN segment. Optus' wholesale NBN offering provides Optus Wholesale customers with cost effective access via a single or multiple aggregation points around the country over our Carrier Ethernet network."
One such customer is telecommunications wholesaler The Grex Group. (Yes, the decision to operate 121 POIs means that in some cases there are three companies between a customer and the NBN – a retail provider, a second-tier wholesaler and a top-tier wholesaler.)
The addition of HFC access means RBBoNBN now supports all of the available NBN technologies.
"With these product developments, we're able to offer scalability to connect to the available NBN multi technology mix footprint. In addition, we can support the appetite for the higher bandwidth demand of NBN end consumers and allow service providers the flexibility to grow and change NBN infrastructure," said Castro.