Macquarie Telecom delivers NBN network speeds with new managed WAN optimization service
Macquarie Telecom, Australia’s number one Managed Hosting and Business-only Telecommunications Company, today announced its Managed WAN Optimization Service (MWO). Using Riverbed Technology, the IT performance company, the new application acceleration service will enable Macquarie Telecom customers to experience LAN-like performance, no matter where they are located, across the Wide Area Network (WAN); delivering National Broadband Network (NBN)-quality network performance ahead of the network’s completion. The MWO service has been designed to maximize performance and responsiveness of business applications up to 100 times across a company’s WAN.
The announcement also sees Macquarie Telecom as the first organization globally to offer a money-back or free bandwidth upgrade service level guarantee for application acceleration as a standard service offering.
With organizations facing an ever increasing need for more bandwidth and faster network speeds, the new fully managed service is ideally suited for companies with branch offices or remote workers. Specifically, MWO significantly improves application network response time for remote, branch and satellite users delivering faster speeds across the WAN. The offering is supported by Macquarie Telecom’s expertise and award winning world class customer care; providing customers with improved network performance, speed, efficiency and reliability.
Glen Noble, Group Executive of Data Services, Macquarie Telecom said, Adding more bandwidth does not always improve the performance of an application over the WAN. Today’s business environment demands the consumption of more and more data and applications than ever before. This announcement provides our customers with the ability to get the most out of their existing networks and paves the way for a super fast highway connection to cloud servers. Our managed hosting experience combined with deep telecommunications expertise, means we are perfectly equipped to deliver customers the benefits of the NBN before it even arrives.â€
In addition, the service provides customers with detailed application level performance reports through a single sign-on portal to allow them full visibility and control, via Macquarie Telecom’s online management tool, InView. As part of the service, Macquarie Telecom will also offer its customers a free initial network assessment and proof of concept to ensure 100% success in implementation of the solution.
Our customers have been demanding a solution that enables them to get the most out of their existing WAN investment. By partnering with Riverbed, we are confident our service can provide significant improvement on application performance for our customers across their WAN; delivering cost savings, increased productivity, streamlined business processes and improved customer satisfaction. We have seen a lot of market demand for this service and have responded by developing and launching MWO to satisfy customer and market requirements,†concluded Noble.
Commenting on the benefits of the solution’s technology, Luke Mackie, Senior ICT Officer, Anglicare Central Queensland, said: Anglicare needed to resolve application performance issues it was experiencing across its WAN. After deploying the Riverbed WAN Optimization technology we achieved a 500% increase in WAN performance during business hours. Documents that took over 2 minutes to open now take between 8 to 10 seconds. The new high performance network was crucial for the deployment of SharePoint across the company.â€
Additional features and benefits of the service include:
- Free 24/7 technical support from the MacquarieHUB
- Money-back service level guarantee
- Introduction of new applications without WAN degradation
- No upfront cost or capital investment fixed monthly price
- Full visibility of managed WAN Optimization appliance, routers, servers and Multiprotocol Label Switching Quality of Service via Macquarie InView
- Acceleration of business applications and bandwidth optimization across the WAN
Ian Raper, Regional Director, Riverbed ANZ concluded, Macquarie Telecom’s decision to roll-out a MWO service complements the current trend of IT consolidation and cloud computing. Using our Steelhead appliances, MWO can accelerate applications up to 100 times, enabling its customers to experience LAN-like performance even though their servers now reside within a private or enterprise cloud.â€
TRAI proposes $13 billion National Broadband Network (India)
The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) has issued recommendations for a National Broadband Plan.
The outline comes after the 2004 national broadband policy failed to markedly develop the Indian broadband market.
Currently, there are 10 million fixed broadband subscribers in India, a penetration of less than 1%. Under the 2004 plan, there were expected to be 20 million fixed broadband subscribers by 2010.
TRAI has suggested setting up a National Optical Fiber Authority (NOFA), a central agency, and a State Optical Fiber Authority (SOFA). These organizations will drive the rollout of the proposed $13.34 billion NBN, which will cover 63 large cities, 4,315 cities/towns, and contain more than 25 million route kilometers of fiber.
Through NBN, TRAI has targeted 75 million broadband connections by 2012, and 160 million connections with download speeds of 10Mbps in 63 large cities, 4Mbps in 352 cities, and 2Mbps in the remaining towns/villages by 2014.
TRAI expects that the NBN will yield annual revenues of $5.8 billion once it is fully operational. Although TRAI’s plan will bring renewed relevance to wired networks in the country, we believe that mobile broadband will continue to be the driver for increased broadband penetration in India.
Australia Raises Pressure on Telstra to Split
Australia has renewed its push to split former state telecoms monopoly Telstra into retail and wholesale arms as part of ambitious plans for a national high-speed broadband network.
According to Prime Minister Julia Gillard, a landmark bill re-introduced on Wednesday would make the telecoms market more competitive and productive and was a critical step in rolling out the National Broadband Network (NBN).
The bill could show the first major test for Gillard’s fragile coalition government, which will depend on a handful of minority lawmakers to overcome hostility to the plan from the conservative opposition.
According to Gillard referring to Telstra, for too long Australian consumers have had the experience of a telecommunications sector with far too much market concentration in one company. With this legislation we can effectively restructure the industry… to deliver broadband services to all Australians at a uniform wholesale price. This reform is vital because it will drive lower prices, better quality and more innovative services.
US$42 billion US NBN, to be rolled out by a government-owned corporation, aims to boost the economy by providing 93% of the vast country’s population with superfast Internet by 2017.
Gillard’s government claims the step will revolutionize workplaces and services including manufacturing, agriculture, education and health for the sprawling nation, and will connect remote residents to doctors and online schools.
Telstra, formerly owned by the government, is the nation’s dominant telecoms firm by subscribers and revenue. By splitting it into wholesale and retail arms, the government hopes to loosen the firm’s stranglehold on the market.
Telstra chief executive David Thodey welcomed the bill and called for its prompt passage. On balance, the company supports the passage of the bill. The company believes the interests of Telstra shareholders would best be served by the bill being passed this year so that a definitive agreement on the involvement in the NBN can be reached quickly.
If implemented, Telstra would likely to become the national network’s largest customer, transferring its customers from its copper wire and cable networks to the new fibre optic system to be built and operated by NBN.
Malcolm Turnbull, the opposition’s communications spokesman, introduced a private member’s bill calling for the provision of a 10-year business plan on the NBN and a cost-benefit analysis to report by May 2011.
Optus market share increases in Australia
www.WirelessFederation.com/news: With Optus racing ahead by 10.9 per cent in the last quarter, Telstra and Vodafone emerge as the apparent losers in a competitive market that has grown by some 8 per cent. Telstra has been simply left behind in the market with Optus becoming faster with new products and plans and using its gains to boost network performance which in turn paves way for more market share gains. The mobile earnings reported an increase of 5% and the revenues were boosted by 12.9%.
Optus last year’s earnings from its mobile division increased from 59 per cent to 63 percent. Exploitation of new devices like the iPhone is a major reason behind the profit of Optus as in the process it not only got better customers but higher-quality customers. It is also offering bundled offers on longer contracts in an attempt to lock in customers.
The tough competition posed by Optus is the reason why Telstra is cutting prices and ditching its past policy to protect its profit margin at all costs. It is also the reason why Optus is so keen to get the NBN project under way in order to increase the pressure on Telstra.
National Broadband Network Implementation Study has been released by the Australian government which outlines the plans to finance and build the new network. 84 recommendations on the technology, financing, ownership, policy framework and market structure of the NBN has been offered by the report to the government. Australian government and Telstra have been in talk with each other for several months on selling part of its fixed network assets to the NBN, but the two have been unable to reach an agreement on the price.
With its foot on Telstra’s throat, Optus now has an ideal time to float but at the same time the official line on that issue has not changed: no present plans. While OPTUS boss Paul O’Sullivan has taken a lead now, he also feels that Telstra will fight back to revive its diminishing market share with more and more lucrative offers.
Telstra challenged by Australian NBN study
www.WirelessFederation.com/news: An implementation study has been released by the Australian government for its proposed National Broadband Network (NBN) recommending aggressive wholesale pricing to drive rapid fiber uptake. Demonstration of the feasibility of a national fiber rollout in competition with the incumbent, Telstra, has been reflected in the study even though the government has not responded formally.
National Broadband Network Company (NBN Co) was established by the Australian government in 2009 to build a wholesale-only FTTH network to cover 90% of the market. McKinsey was appointed by the government to prepare an implementation study for the project, which was released on May 6.
There are certain recommendations made in the study which includes extension of FTTP to 93% of premises and that the NBN Co launches two Ka-band satellites to deliver 12Mbps services to 3% of the remaining market. 12Mbps wireless technology will serve the intermediate 4% of the market with the operator to be selected by tender.
Only Layer 2 will offer the access services but Layer-3 services might also be considered to support services such as IPTV. Designing of the network will be done in a way to support future Layer-1 unbundling, but this is not recommended during the eight-year rollout.
A$42.8 billion ($38.3 billion) has been set as the cost of the entire network, of which A$26 billion is for fiber, a realistic figure in our opinion. Low double-play wholesale price point of $30 has also been recommended to compete with current wholesale DSL pricing. High take-up rates within the fiber footprint of 612% per annum are the real intentions behind the pricing.
A high take-up rate means that NBN Co is winning wholesale customers off the Telstra network. It has been implied that with the implementation of the study, the low wholesale price point will cause traffic to migrate off Telstra’s copper network, ultimately forcing Telstra to migrate also.
Optus, Telstra join hands against govt deal (Australia)
www.WirelessFederation.com/news: Telstra and Optus have joined hands to balk at the deal with the government over the national broadband network. The No. 2 carrier in Australia has claimed that significant changes are required to draft legislation before it will sign up to the $43 billion project.
Optus has warned in the submission to the senate select committee on the national broadband network that the project could be sunk unless clauses that allowed the government-owned network to compete in retail markets are removed. Besides, clauses specifically in supply of telco services to government agencies are also required to be removed from the draft legislation.
Telstra against NBN draft legislation (Australia)
www.WirelessFederation.com/news: The recent change to the Australia’s National Broadband Network (NBN) proposal has been severely opposed by telecom operator Telstra which has expressed its deep concern by the change effecting negotiations over the sale of assets.
A new state-owned broadband network company will be allowed by the draft legislation to provide retail services, instead of just wholesale services. According to the company, such an outcome would run counter to the core purpose of the NBN and the government’s primary policy objective of restructuring the industry to have separate providers for retail and wholesale fixed network services.
Negotiations over the sale of assets to the government is currently on the cards of Telstra which has promised to spend up to AUD43 billion (USD38.6 billion) on rolling out high speed internet access throughout the country.
G9 group to lodge bid to set up Australian broadband network (Australia)
The G9 group of competitive telecommunications companies will prepare and lodge a bid with the Australian government to build a national broadband network. The move follows the government’s announcement that it will conduct an open and competitive bidding process and legislate to enable a new high speed broadband network for built-up areas. The details of participation by individual G9 members will be decided as the offer is
finalised.
