P2P too hot for NEXTEP to handle
Internet service providers Wild IT and People Telecom have stopped using NEC NEXTEP's business-grade network to sell consumer-grade ADSL2+ broadband, after some of the pair's residential customers proved too much for NEXTEP.
"We operate a business-grade network, and we've been working with them on our ... product set, so that they offer the appropriate products to the appropriate segments," NEXTEP managing director Duncan Wallace told ZDNet Australia this morning via telephone.
Wallace said some of the customers buying NEXTEP-based ADSL2+ services from the ISPs were residential in nature, and had proved a problem, especially those downloading hundreds of gigabytes of files via peer-to-peer services (for example, BitTorrent).
"Our network hasn't been built or designed to provide those types of services.
"We kind of like to stop at probably the top end of small office/home office because our network, in terms of its profiling and everything, it's meant for business customers," Wallace said.
People Telecom chief executive John Stanton confirmed his company's move, saying it will continue to sell ADSL2+ to business customers, and would support existing ADSL2+ consumer customers.
Wild IT published a statement on its Web site yesterday, stating: "Effectively immediately, Wild IT will provision no more ADSL (ADSL2 or ADSL1) services on the NEXTEP network, with specific arrangements to be made to migrate certain plan types."
Wild IT claimed it was NEXTEP's relationship with other telcos that was the problem.
"While the partnership with NEXTEP has been an excellent one, we've been hamstrung by their upstream relationships with other carriers including Telstra," Wild said. NEXTEP's Wallace said this statement was in relation to the extra upstream bandwidth cost that P2P services generated.
Wild IT has signalled it will not remain dependent on NEC for ADSL2+ services, flagging a move to provide both ADSL1 and ADSL2+ broadband through a new relationship with Optus.
"NEXTEP's core business and speciality is on its core (layer 2) network and we will continue to pursue ways of leveraging these benefits for our corporate customers on their HDSL and tier 1 business-grade ADSL services," Wild IT said.