[LINK] Telstra wideband in Melbourne

[stephen at melbpc.org.au]

Cable Digital News Analysis

'Telstra Amps Up Its HFC'   November 19, 2009 | Jeff Baumgartner 

<http://www.lightreading.com/document.asp?
doc_id=184834&site=cdn&f_src=lightreading_gnews>


Telstra Corp, the latest telecom provider to join the Docsis 3.0 club 
("wideband" .. http://www.lightreading.com/document.asp?doc_id=173525)

is stamping its membership with the launch of a 100-Mbit/s service on
its hybrid fiber/coax (HFC) network in Melbourne. 

Telstra plans to make the new tier available to about 1 million homes on 
Dec. 1. 

That's a significant boost over Telstra's previously fastest tier, 
BigPond Cable Extreme, which offers downstream speeds up to 30 Mbit/s to 
1.8 million homes. 

Another 900,000 Telstra cable homes have access to peak speeds up to 17 
Mbit/s. 

Although the new cable modem tier will be among the fastest when it comes 
to downstream bursts, it's still lacking similar punch in the upstream, 
offering a very asymmetric 2 Mbit/s. 

Even without the benefit of Docsis 3.0 upstream channel bonding, U.S.-
based MSOs such as Comcast Corp. and Cablevision Systems Corp. have been 
able to offer wideband tiers that market best-effort upstream speeds in 
the neighborhood of 10 Mbit/s or 15 Mbit/s.

The operator isn't saying anything yet about monthly pricing or usage 
caps for the new tier. 

Regarding the latter, the largest monthly Internet usage allowance 
Telstra offers is 400 GBytes, and it generally charges 15 cents per 
megabyte above that cap. 

Telstra said this portion of its HFC upgrade will cost less than the $300 
million originally expected, but noted that its overall capex plan for 
the year remains firm at $3.8 billion. 

In tandem with the Docsis 3.0 upgrade, Telstra also announced that an 
upgrade to its Velocity fiber-to-the-home (FTTP) network will also push 
downstream capacity to 100 Mbit/s. 


Teeing up the 'T-Box'

T-Box. Telstra plans to debut a dual-tuner DVR in the coming months. 

Telstra plans to use these faster speeds to help feed the T-Box, a dual-
tuner DVR that has 200 GBytes of storage and is capable of recording free-
to-air TV shows as well as broadband-fed content from the BigPond TV and 
BigPond Movies download services. 

Content piped to the T-Box, which will compete against TiVo Inc. and the 
Foxtel iQ, reportedly will complement channels from Foxtel, a cable and 
satellite TV operator in which Telstra owns a 50 percent stake. 

Telstra hasn't released pricing on the T-Box, but expects to start trials 
in Melbourne within months. 

The speed upgrades and product introductions are coming into play as the 
Australian government looks to break up the carrier, proposing that 
Telstra separate its retail business from its network and wholesale 
operations. 

That proposal is linked to Australia's $30 billion-plus National 
Broadband Network (NBN), a budding open-network project. 

As the thinking goes, the separation of Telstra's retail operations would 
give the company a second chance to participate in NBN, since the 
government originally disqualified Telstra from the request for proposal 
(RFP) process. 

— Jeff Baumgartner, Site Editor, Cable Digital News



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