[LINK] Telstra ultimatum on fibre

Glen Turner gdt at gdt.id.au
Tue Jun 12 12:41:55 AEST 2007


On Mon, 2007-06-11 at 23:18 +1000, Saliya Wimalaratne wrote:

> So that when competitor <x> says "I have a carrier licence, I need
> to put my (superlative deleted) equipment in" Telstra can say "I'm sorry,
> there isn't the physical space for that". 

The rort is better than that. Third party equipment goes into a TEBA
room, and you can easily run out of space in this room whilst there
are acres of space in the exchange proper.

Access to the TEBA room is artificially limited to one carrier at
a time, so if iiNet are installing a DSLAM this fortnight then the
next carrier doesn't get access until after that. Naturally queues
for access several months long are common.

Once the installation is complete, Telstra inspect the work, which
must be done to Telstra's standards -- which is much more detailed
than ACMA standards.  This leads to delightful operational issues,
such as your device names being consistent everywhere but for
devices in Telstra spaces.

The first carrier to install in TEBA space pays the total cost of
fit out from making the room from a shell to a working space to
Telstra standards.  Future carriers pay Telstra which then refunds
the first carrier.  You can see that this tactic discourages use
of TEBA space.

Telstra's standards in the TEBA room are aimed at telcos, not ISPs.
So power is DC and there is little of it per rack.  This standard
nicely ignores that most TEBA occupants *are* ISPs.

I have installed equipment in Singapore, Frankfurt, London, Los Angeles,
Palo Alto, Seattle and New York. But nowhere have I had more difficulty
from the colocation provider than installing equipment in a Telstra
exchange in Alice Springs.

-- 
 Glen Turner




More information about the Link mailing list