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-------------------------------------------------------------- This story was printed from ZDNet Australia. --------------------------------------------------------------
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Optus offers free broadband to customers By AAP October 28, 2004 URL: http://www.zdnet.com.au/news/communications/soa/Optus-offers-free-broadband-to-customers/0,130061791,139164590,00.htm
 Optus has come up with a radical way of getting more broadband customers--giving it away for free. It's an example of how fiercely telcos are competing for the 100,000 new customers that take up the Internet service each month in Australia. Optus today announced that under its offer, it would give three months of free broadband to any customer that has either a mobile or a home phone with Optus. If the customer has all three -- broadband, mobile and home phone-- with Optus, they get four months of free broadband. The offer isn't just for new customers, but any existing customers can get the free broadband as well. "Just give us a call," Optus' acting managing director of consumer and multimedia Scott Lorson said. The free broadband is for any plan--from the most basic to the high-end plans worth over AU$100 a month. Lorson admitted the offer would tighten the already narrow margins that Optus, like all telcos, makes from broadband. But Optus hopes to make money in the long run from customer loyalty, as well as by stealing customers from rivals and attracting new consumers. "Our goal is to gain market share and to extend our relationship with our customers," Lorson said. "Currently we have over 95 percent of our broadband customers with a second product with Optus." Earlier this month, Optus announced it had achieved more than 250,000 broadband subscribers, as it continued to benefit from an industry-wide surge in popularity for the Internet service. The telco said it added over 50,000 new broadband subscribers in the last three months. The majority of the subscribers--190,000 of them-- access broadband through Optus' own cables, which cover most of Australia's eastern seaboard including Brisbane, Sydney and Melbourne. The other 60,000 access broadband through their Telstra-owned telephone lines, known as DSL broadband, and Optus has to pay Telstra a fee for those customers.
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