X
Home & Office

Amcom's ADSL2+ near

Amcom Telecommunications today said it would start selling high-speed ADSL2+ broadband services in the final quarter of this year, at least 15 months after the telco first started talking about the technology. "We expect to launch ADSL2+ in the second quarter [of financial year 2007]," the telco's chief executive officer Eddy Lee said in a briefing released to the Australian Stock Exchange today.
Written by Renai LeMay, Contributor

Amcom Telecommunications today said it would start selling high-speed ADSL2+ broadband services in the final quarter of this year, at least 15 months after the telco first started talking about the technology.

"We expect to launch ADSL2+ in the second quarter [of financial year 2007]," the telco's chief executive officer Eddy Lee said in a briefing released to the Australian Stock Exchange today.

The financial year runs from July through June, so Lee was referring to the closing months of 2006.

ADSL2+ is a broadband standard currently being adopted around Australia that allows speeds of up to 24Mbps. The existing ADSL1 standard only allows speeds of up to 8Mbps, and is usually sold Down Under at speeds of up to 1.5Mbps.

Amcom's move comes as the telco has for at least 15 months been talking about selling services based on the ADSL2+ standard. For example, back in June 2005 Lee said his company was conducting an ADSL2+ pilot program.

The telco currently only sells ADSL at up 8Mbps, although it does offer a range of higher-speed services over its fibre-optic network.

Also in the briefing, Lee said his company recently successfully migrated 3,200 of the customers it acquired with Internet service provider Arachnet onto Amcom's own network hardware. Those customers had previously been using services from Telstra's wholesale division.

"This will provide a cost saving for financial year 2007 of around AU$900,000," said Lee.

Amcom currently has its own ADSL network hardware in some 30 of Telstra's telephone exchanges in Perth, and seven in Adelaide.

In Adelaide, Lee noted his company had not yet finished building a fibre-optic network connecting South Australia's higher education facilities.

Amcom won the contract to build the South Australian Broadband Research and Education Network or SABRENet in November last year. The network will be used for educational purposes but also to fuel Amcom's own business.

Earlier this month in another statement to the Australian Stock Exchange, Amcom said the network was expected to commence operation in January 2007.

In that statement, Amcom also said it was continuing to build additional fibre-optic communications infrastructure.

"Over the last two years, our network has grown by 37 percent to 950 fibre kilometres, and it now enters 655 buildings," the telco said. That fibre network is primarily in Perth and Adelaide.

A spokesperson for Amcom was not immediately available to comment for this article.

Editorial standards