John Linton I mentioned before I went on holidays that it appeared that Telstra was beginning to step up the pressure on the ISPs who had 'dared' to instal their own DSLAMs to offer ADSL2 services that were less reliant on Telstra's domination of the telecommunications infrastructures.
For the past 12 months Telstra Retail has been aggressively marketing ADSL2 services to other ISP's ADSL1 customers (and perhaps their own ADSL1 customers) via 'special limited offers' where Telstra have enabled ADSL2 exchanges. It appears that after 12 months of intensive direct approaches to customers on these exchanges that the 'take up' has cost/effectively exhausted the potential and it's now time for the next phase of these operations - making available a Teltra Wholesale version of ADSL2 to add whatever further discomfort this may occasion to those ISPs who have rolled out their own DSLAMs.
I suppose the other considerations, in an increasingly uncomfortable prospect of 'operational separaton', are that Telstra also has to try to look as though it does offer a true wholesale broadband service to other ISPs and doesn't simply use its monopoly position to hinder the provision of reasonably priced ADSL2 services to Australian end users. I don't know who would be stupid enough to believe that 'line' but it's hard to think of someone off hand.
The other consideration could be that Telstra Wholesale has lost an awful lot of wholesale ISP and telephone service buyers as so many ISPs have moved their previously purchased ADSL and wire line buying from Telstra to be delivered via their own infrastructures (for which they still pay a lot of money to Telstra Wholesale for exchange space rental and line termination monthly and one off charges etc).
When you think about it - Westnet was probably the last/latest ISP of any size to move the majority of its business away from Telstra after it was bought out by iiNet. Optus, AAPT, iPrimus,TPG/SPT,iiNet and several smaller ISPs have all moved sizable amounts of business away from Telstra Wholesale over the past 12 months and all of those companies continue to build out their own infrastructures meaning that they are committed to continue to move away as much of their remaining business as they can in the coming 12 to 24 months.
I have no idea of the amount of revenue (profit) this has cost Telstra Wholesale and certainly until the FY2008 figures are reported there is no way of seeing if in fact the natural growth in the telecomunications Australian market has offset these moves of business away from Telstra Wholesale in any meaningful way. That will become clear in a month or so.
It appears that Telstra Wholesale is now further advanced in its change of practice not to wholesale ADSL2 with at least PeopleTelecom possibly signing up to become the first ISP to re-sell the Telstra ADSL2 services in the near future. It wouldn't be a stretch to believe that if Telstra Wholesale is going to resell ADSL2 to one ISP then it would be offering the ADSL2 service to other ISPs.
However, People Telecom is one of the few ISPs of any sort of 'size' (though probably less than 50,000 ADSL1 customers) to not have an ADSL2 offering (having run into trouble with their previous attempt). As far as I can tell all of the ISPs whose names I'm familiar with already have arrangements with Optus ADSL2 (or possibly AAPT/Powertel) or have rolled out their own limited infrastuctures in the main exchanges where they have the majority of their customers and then, in some instances, used Optus to provide some additional exchanges.
Where is Telstra Wholesale going to now find wholesale customers for its ADSL1 and ADSL2 services? Perhaps it is going to be 'content' with signing up its major competitors to provide ADSL2 services on exchanges where it's uneconomical for them to deploy their own DSLAMs? While that makes sense it is going to pose some pretty interesting 'marketing challenges' for ISPs who might contemplate doing that given the likely disparity in the costs of providing the two different services.
Maybe this is just another 'spoiling tactic' by Telstra to eliminate any sizable ADSL2 wholesale market for people like iiNet and Optus and AAPT who might think that wholesaling ADSL2 ports and back hauls will add economy of scale to their own 'marginal' deployments in remoter exchanges?
I suppose additional 'competition' in the ADSL2 marketplace can only be good for Australian end customers - isn't that the conventional logic?