Aussie Broadband taps Telstra Wholesale for extra backhaul coverage

Aussie Broadband Limited has announced a five-year deal with Telstra Wholesale to provide backhaul capacity between 42 NBN POIs and data centres in the remaining areas not covered by Aussie’s own fibre network. The deal is complementary to Aussie Broadband’s fibre network build, and brings forward savings from Aussie Broadband’s fibre network and legacy Telstra Wholesale leasing agreements by an estimated $1 million for FY22 and $15 million per year from FY23 onwards.

The deal comprises both inter-capital and NBN POI capacity through the use of dark fibre and wavelengths and enables significant capacity increases across the network. Upgrades will be rolled out over the next nine months, to be completed by April 2022. All 121 NBN Points of Interconnect (POIs), through both Aussie Broadband’s fibre and through Telstra Wholesale fibre, will be upgraded from current 10G or 20G connections to 100G minimum capacity at each POI. The combination of the Telstra Wholesale deal and Aussie Broadband’s fibre network will provide fully diverse and protected capacity to all 121 NBN POIs, connecting each POI to two separate capital city data centres, along with equipment diversity at both the POI and data centre level. This increased protection will reduce the potential of customer impact, should a link or piece of equipment fail.

The deal will allow Aussie Broadband to upgrade its inter-capital links, which connect major data centre sites around Australia with 400G fully protected links on major routes and multiple 100G paths to all remaining capital cities. This additional network capacity will accelerate growth in the business segment and underpins the company’s plans to target the enterprise and business market using NBN’s Enterprise Ethernet and Telstra Ethernet access products which are ideal with the enterprise and mid-tier business markets. It will also provide additional capacity to continue the company’s residential and white label segments growth.

The company is also expanding its business direct sales, solution design and pre-sales engineering capabilities, alongside expanding the capacity of its Carbon platform, to target larger business customers. Managing Director Phillip Britt said that over the next six months, Aussie Broadband plans to release a range of products into the Carbon platform, specifically suited to larger businesses.

“Carbon has been a game-changer for many of our larger corporate customers; helping them to fully customise, design and order telecommunication services rather than prescribing strict, predetermined service packages. Carbon is a key feature in our product suite, and it allows our customers a level of control over their services that they’ve never had access to before, positioning the company as a leader in the business and enterprise space,” Britt said.

The company will release its full year results on Monday, 30 August 2021, with an online presentation to shareholders at 1 pm AEST.

Image credit: Aussie Broadband