One word that cannot be used to describe Nicholas Demos is bashful. The head of the small ISP MyRepublic has made a splash after his arrival in Australia last November, with media tactics that tend to remind one of those employed by Ruslan Kogan, the head of online retailer Kogan.com.
Despite being in the Australian market for less than a year, Demos now claims to have 40,000 subscribers in the country. He is also looking after the company's operations in New Zealand and Singapore.
A stock phrase that he uses is "a network that's fit for purpose".
And he is not afraid to rile the bigger telcos by pointing to what he calls "the big four" as part of the problem faced by consumers who are switching to the NBN: slow speeds.
{loadposition sam08}During an informal chat, Demos said that Telstra, Optus, TPG and Vocus had no interest in making the NBN an attractive proposition - because it would be taking business away from them.
This was why costs were being kept high, to push customers to take up slower speed tiers which were within their budgets.
He has a point: as an example, what MyRepublic sells for $69.99 is being sold for $109.99 by iiNet, a part of TPG's stable.
The company ran a contest in Wollongong, asking residents why fast broadband was essential to them. The winner and 100 others who live within a 10km radius were given discounted gigabit connections.
Demos has even gone so far as to offer gigabit connections to additional subscribers in Wollongong for $129.99 — exactly how many was not specified — a move that he says he has made solely to disprove the assertion by NBN Co Bill Morrow that Australians will not take up high-speed connections even if these are offered free.
The MyRepublic chief says that if the price is right, then people will take up gigabit connections. He says his experiment in Wollongong is costing him money, but he is intent on making his point.
New Zealand does not face an oppressive CVC cost, the one factor that has been identified as one of the reasons why Australians have to pay through the nose for their NBN connections.
And in Singapore, says Demos, the CVC charge is negligible. As a result, in both these countries the number of gigabit connections is soaring.
Australia, meanwhile, is stuck in the slow lane.
Demos has no hesitation about admitting that he is in business to make money. But, he says, he would like to do so by providing a product that's — and there come those words again — "fit for purpose".
Whether small retail service providers are able to shake up the slow, congealed Australian market remains to be seen. But if consumers are getting services cheaper, then these upstarts need to be encouraged.