Pacific Internet goes premium - News - Communications

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This story was printed from ZDNet Australia.
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Pacific Internet goes premium

By James Pearce, ZDNet Australia
June 25, 2002
URL: http://www.zdnet.com.au/news/communications/soa/Pacific-Internet-goes-premium/0,130061791,120266181,00.htm

Local ISP Pacific Internet has released a Premium Business DSL plan with a 99.9 percent service level agreement-but you have to pay for it.

The new broadband plan offers speeds of up to 6Mbps, and begins paying rebates after 40 minutes of downtime a month. However, a 512Kbps ADSL connection costs AU$119 per month on the standard business DSL plan and AU$270 per month on the premium business DSL plan. The connection fee is also AU$100 higher.

Kylie Hutchison, product manager for Pacific Internet, told ZDNet Australia it was responding to a demand in the marketplace for reliable service, and the main benefits of the premium business service are stability, high speed and flexibility.

-The target market are people who have already embraced DSL, and are now relying on it more and more," Hutchison said. -Also, people who have been hesitant in the past because of reliability issues."

According to Hutchison, most of the service level agreements (SLAs) that offer a 99.9 percent guarantee start paying out after the system goes down for several hours, whereas Pacific Internet starts its rebates after 40 minutes, a more accurate reflection of 0.1 percent downtime.

Pacific Internet claims to be able to offer that stability because it is a 'true layer 2' provider, and it provides a new copper wire specifically for the connection.

-We don't expect to be paying out rebates because the network history is better than 99.9, I think it comes to 99.97 historically," said Hutchison.

Similar offers by ISP Request are cheaper, the ADSL 6Mbps/640Kbps is AU$106 cheaper and the SHDSL 2/2Mbps is AU$331 cheaper, but the SLA doesn't kick in until after five hours.