Aust businesses snap up broadband - News - Communications

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This story was printed from ZDNet Australia.
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Aust businesses snap up broadband

By James Pearce, ZDNet Australia
June 06, 2003
URL: http://www.zdnet.com.au/news/communications/soa/Aust-businesses-snap-up-broadband/0,130061791,120275166,00.htm

The number of businesses deploying DSL has almost doubled in the last year, and nine out of ten customers are happy with their ISP, according to a survey by IDC.

The survey of over 200 businesses found that 49.5 percent had DSL broadband currently deployed, compared to 25 percent in 2002. The survey also found that over half of Australian companies expect to increase their spending on both broadband and Internet Protocol (IP) service usage during 2003. The increase of penetration of DSL into the business market is expected to slow, but still breach 60 percent by the end of the year.

"We expect the growth to pick up for consumers next year [2004], to be higher than business," Landry Fevre, Senior Research Analyst IDC Telecommunications Research told ZDNet Australia .

The communications managers in larger organisations listed first class network, quality of service and customer service as the main criteria looked for when choosing a service provider. Smaller SME's were more price sensitive, and tended to be a bit slower in terms of adoption.

"They need a really pragmatic business case to demonstrate there is value to their business," said Fevre.

According to Fevre 90 percent of companies are satisfied with their broadband providers. Of the 10 percent of dissatisfied customers, three quarters were looking to switch service providers.

The IP services market is more competitive, according to Fevre, with more companies providing different solutions, such as iPVN (the IP enhancement of Private Virtual Networking), Voice over IP and video conferencing. Although 90 percent of businesses are satisfied with their IP services provider, 85-90 percent of those who are dissatisfied are looking to switch.

"Telstra has the highest market share in broadband business services with 50 percent, followed by Optus with 8.2 percent, and third AAPT with 7.1 percent. iPrimus follows with 1.5 percent market share and the rest of IP services providers share 23 percent of the remaining market," said Fevre.

The market share of Telstra and Optus was effectively stable between 2002 and 2003, but AAPT gained some market share, a result Fevre described as 'surprising' considered the company was put on the backbench for 24 months after the acquisition by Telecom New Zealand. He said AAPT had slowly been gaining market share over the past year.