iPrimus thinks Australians are being shortchanged on access to faster broadband.
This week’s massive ADSL2+ announcement by Telstra has raised the obvious question – where are the other ISPs?
If you believe iPrimus, there’s a queue of ISPs just itching to rollout faster Internet across Australia. They are, but it seems fast ADSL2+ might be more widely available by now, if it weren't for squabbling over access to telephone exchanges.
iPrimus claims Telstra has “denied” them from getting inside key exchanges. “In many cases Primus and other competitors have been queuing more than eight months to get into exchanges to deploy broadband equipment,” CEO Ravi Bhatia said in a statement.
Whether this would mean cheaper prices is yet to be seen, but iPrimus isn’t waiting around for Telstra to cement itself as the only ADSL2+ option for millions of homes. If it can’t setup its own equipment, it wants Telstra to wholesale ADSL2+.
Should you care? “Declaration can only be a good outcome for consumers,” says Bhatia, and by that we assume he means cheaper broadband.
Internode has also expressed concern on the broadband news site Whirlpool. CEO Simon Hackett said people who want “higher speed at 'any cost' - may still reconsider that view when they look at just what 'any cost' means with BigPond”.
And you thought faster broadband was good news.