Telstra has signed Agile Communications to its newly priced wholesale ADSL offering, which the telecoms player claims is about 30 percent cheaper.

The telco behemoth has been silent on the details of its new pricing structure since it bowed to pressure ten days ago from the competition watchdog to change what was deemed as anti-competitive behaviour and drop costs.

Although Agile, the first customer to come to Telstra's party, would not disclose figures the company's technical director Simon Hackett said a 30 percent drop in pricing was about right.

Agile said it was actively involved in the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission's (ACCC) investigation of Telstra's anti-competitive wholesale access pricing -- which worked out to be more expensive than its entry-level retail product, according to Hackett. -We were loosing money hand over fist," he said.

"We really couldn't get any traction from Telstra until the ACCC got involved," he added. -We set a bar that Telstra needed to reach for and after a lot of rational negotiations they actually hit the bar."

According to Hackett, Telstra has also simplified its pricing structure, making it not just cheaper but -cleaner". -It levels the playing field in quite a reasonable manner," he said.

Telstra's new wholesale model also provides Layer 2 Tunnelling Protocol (L2TP), which provides a far more basic product to wholesale customers, allowing them to do what they want to add their own value to it and differentiate themselves from BigPond products, Telstra Wholesale's Graeme Salt told ZDNet Australia.

The telco heavyweight claims to have six wholesale customers trialing L2TP at present and is looking to have a full product available in March 2002.

Agile confirmed that it's an active trial participant of Telstra's L2TP offering, turning it first trial service on a couple of days ago, according to Hackett. L2TP will enable Agile to enhance ADSL business services in the virtual private network (VPN) realm rather than just Internet connection, Hackett said.

-This is Telstra's attempt to solve the problem of the way access to its network was restricted," he said. -Before the service limited our ability to be innovative."

Hackett said that Telstra's new wholesale pricing structure will allow Agile, which is currently focussed in its home state of SA, to expand into the retail market and to grow geographically.

-Now we can spread our wings substantially," Hackett said, adding that Agile, the first non-Telstra provider to deliver ADSL outcomes to rural South Australia, was looking to take production nationally by February/March 2002.

Agile also expects to be providing services in the Northern Territories before Christmas. -It's not a large market but a natural extension for us," Hackett said.

With 500 ADSL customers already in SA, Agile believes it has a headstart in the marketplace there, however, -now we'll have to run like the devil because it's also made it easier for our competition, Hackett said.

Telstra hopes to have another deal signed with a WA-based customer today and said about five or six deals are near to closing.

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