Optus announced today it was set to deliver a revolution in the wholesale telecommunications market by providing competitive ADSL2+ broadband and standard telephony over its network to its wholesale customers.
A number of Optus Wholesale customers are participating in a Business Readiness Testing exercise for the company's roll out of wholesale residential broadband and telephony services over copper on the unbundled local loop (ULL).
Customers signed up to participate in the testing are Exetel, iseek Communication and Internode.
Optus' network will be available for more wholesale customers in the fourth quarter of this year.
The access network and wholesale support systems went 'live' on 24 July 2006 to test the customers own ordering systems.
David Katz, Acting Managing Director Optus Wholesale, said Optus had reinforced its commitment to the wholesale market by providing a viable alternative to the incumbent.
"This service will provide the first true alternative to the incumbent's Local Call Resale service, because Optus Wholesale can provide full featured telephony services over Optus owned infrastructure. There are direct financial benefits from having wholesale customers directly connected to our network.
"Optus' network will provide improved performance and fast broadband speeds to other telcos to on-sell to their residential customers. Consumers will then experience faster downloads making internet browsing and email use much faster."
In preparation for the launch Optus has built a new IT system to interface with its wholesale customers.
"This is the first Optus Wholesale product to be built on Optus' new strategic IT system that will automatically provision the new ULL telephony and ADSL2+ services," Mr Katz said.
"Wholesale customers will have the option of a web or business-to-business (B2B) interface to provision services automatically. Both interfaces offer real time service qualifications, order placement and order status.
"Our wholesale customers have the ability to access their customers' information in real time through a secure login using the Optus network - this includes viewing the DSLAM port card and copper line to which their end customers are connected.
"This enhancement is the first of its kind and has received overwhelming support from our wholesale customers." Mr Katz said.
Optus Wholesale has established a purpose built Customer Care Centre in Sydney. The Wholesale Residential Customer Care team has 30 experienced representatives responsible for the end-to-end management of the customer. They will offer a single customer interface for all billing, fault, activation and provisioning and queries from our wholesale customers.
Optus has rolled out 148 exchanges at the end of June 2006 with 30,000 residential customers provisioned with Optus Direct services on the ULL network.
Media contact: Simone Bergholcs Optus Corporate Affairs Tel: (02) 9342 7846
Note to editor: In September 2005, Optus announced it would invest $150 million in its new DSLAM network, reaching another 2.9 million households and businesses in addition to the 1.4 million homes currently serviced by the Optus cable network in Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane.
Optus Consumer launched Optus launched consumer DSL in March 2006 stating the new network will deliver two premium services: Optus DSL Direct (broadband services) and Optus Local Direct (home telephony services).
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