Monday, July 30. 2007
John Linton
The ability for carriers/providers to buy a copper line from Telstra
without a dial tone has actually been around for over 30 years and has
been utilized to carry data for all of that time (initially and still
predominantly in the âback to baseâ alarm scenario).
Exetel's directors, in a 'previous life', were offering 2 mbps x 2
mbps data services over what were then known as âPAPLâ lines from
Telstra in the early 1990s when the cost of such a line from Telstra
was $120.00 per month compared to over $2,000 per month for a PRI â the
only difference being the PAPL distance was constrained to around 3
kilometers making it only of use to a service provider for customers in
a cityâs CBD.
More recently Telstra has been âforcedâ by the ACCC to provide
termination of a PSTN line to another carrierâs dslam in an exchange
without making a charge for the dial tone service â in other words itâs
a copper line that runs from an end point to an end point carrying a
signal generated by whatever devices the lessee of the line (the
carrier/service provider) decides to install.
The charge for such a line is much less than that charged for a line that carries a dial tone.
This means that organisations such as Engin (who offer VoIP plus
ADSL) can reduce the line cost they must include in the end user price
and organisations such as TPG can reduce the cost of their ADSL2
service.
While this will appeal to both vendors and some buyers of
communications services it can only be offered to customers connected
to those exchanges where the carrier/service provider has dslams and is
restricted to customers who wish to give up their âconventionalâ
telephone service and current telephone number.
Exetelâs current suppliers (Optus and Powertel) will probably take
whatever cost savings they may achieve in to consideration in the
future but neither company has yet made any definitive statements to Exetel about
what that might be or even if any such service will be offered.
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