Dan Warne25 February 2009, 1:35 PM
Internode has unexpectedly announced a fibre-to-the-home broadband service for $49 a month. But there is a catch...
... to get the service, you have to be in a 'greenfields' housing development -- where the homes are being built from the ground up, with fresh plumbing, cabling and conduits being laid for the whole estate.
The FTTH services will be available at speeds of 25, 50 and 100Mbit/s and will cost from $49.95 a month.
There's also a connection to your clothes line — Internode is partnering with part of the Hills Industries empire to provide the fibre services. Yes, that's right, Hills Industries as in the makers of the famous Hills Hoist.
In case you're wondering, though, Hills is no longer pegged to just making clothes lines, but is now a large business supplying metals, electronics components and more. One division of Hills is housing estate telecoms specialist OptiComm, which will presumably lay the cables in estates while Internode provides the service.
The first Internode Home Fibre services will be at Queensland’s Fernbrooke estate, a development by Urban Pacific at Redbank Plains, located 32km south-west of the Brisbane CBD, with 1000+ homes.
Internode says it has twelve housing projects in the pipeline including at the Lochiel Park and Northgate developments in South Australia.
Internode Home Fibre plans cost from $49.95 a month for a service with a 25 Mbps downstream speed and a 5GB download quota.
Home Fibre services are also available at downstream speeds of 50 Mbps and 100 Mbps, which would cost "less than $100" per month.
With Internode Home Fibre services, the quoted downstream speed is actually delivered to the home’s Ethernet port, unlike the “best effort” speeds provided by traditional ADSL2+ services.
“Internode’s ability to deliver a 25 Mbps Fibre to the Home service for less than $50 a month and a true 100 Mbps service for less than $100 demonstrates that technology is not the barrier to deploying a world-best broadband system in Australia," said Internode CEO Simon Hackett.
“Our testing shows that Internode Home Fibre service is working extremely well, delivering outcomes at up to eight times faster than the National Broadband Network target speed of 12 Mbps. NBN speeds stopped being the future quite some time ago. Significantly, FTTH is scaleable in the future to speeds far greater than that again.
As well as access to Australia’s fastest retail broadband service, Internode Home Fibre subscribers will receive access to a phone service that provides a conventional ‘dial tone’ voice service to each subscribing household, directly from the OptiComm termination unit in the home.
Full details of Internode Home Fibre services are available at http://www.internode.on.net/ftth.
Of course, Greenfields Fibre projects have some downsides: generally there's no choice of provider, so the price competition isn't present like it is in ADSL. And likewise, if the only phone service available is provided via the fibre, calling rates and packages may not be as competitive, either. See Q&A with Simon Hackett below.
APC has asked Internode whether the network will be opened at wholesale to other ISPs, and whether increases in value are expected to run at parity with other services like ADSL. We'll post Internode's response when we hear back.
UPDATE: Q & A with Internode's Simon Hackett
Q: Will Internode open the network at wholesale to other ISPs?
A: It's already open to other ISPs.
Opticomm is the last mile fibre provider. We're a wholesale customer of their wholesale-only fibre tail circuit servce.
Opticomm are the real world alternative for a developer to signing their development over to "Telstra Velocity" - the retail only, wholesale-never service that Telstra are deploying in some new developments today - and which tops out at 25 megabits per second because Telstra haven't really invented real FTTH services yet.
Hence a developer choosing to work with Opticomm guarantees their residents competitive broadband and voice services from multiple providers, which contrasts to a Telstra Velocity scenario which guarantees only Telstra services - ever. I think that in the future, the Velocity-only housing developments will be actively rejected by new house builders in favour of a realm in which broadband value for money actually does get better over time.
I believe we will become their most successful retailer because this is something in which we're brilliant at execution - but its open to any suitably qualified national ISP to offer services over the same infrastructure - now.
Q: If it is not to be wholesaled, do you feel that increases in value will occur in parity on the home services with other ADSL services? (Note, I realise the fibre service is already better value than ADSL at the moment, but I'm looking at whether having Internode as the only ISP to these customers could slow Internode's motivation to increase value over time.)
A: Not applicable - as above. Except that the question of comparison to Telstra Velocity enabled FTTH developments is key here. If you are in one of those, I can guarantee your broadband won't get cheaper for a very very long time.
Q: What sort of phone packages do you intend to offer customers via the service? For example would they get the $10 free calls that's provided via Ultra, or better?
A: Right now we're offering a Fibre enabled version of NodePhone - as per the press release:
As well as access to Australia’s fastest retail broadband service, Internode Home Fibre subscribers will receive access to a phone service that provides a conventional ‘dial tone’ voice service to each subscribing household, directly from the OptiComm termination unit in the home.
Dial tone comes out in the customers' house from their fibre termination unit, alongside the PPPoE ethernet port.
Behind the scenes that box is actually a SIP enabled ATA and the service is in fact NodePhone with no customer hardware (other than a handset) required.
And it's at NodePhone rates, meaning calls to other Internode customers on an Opticomm enabled estate are free (as well as calls to any NodePhone customer nationally of course - and vice versa).
We may well offer a bundled offering, but initially we're launching with simply two separate services where the customer can choose either or both of the voice and the data services we have on the network.