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Revision as of 07:51, 20 September 2007

Exetel is an Australian ISP which provides ADSL, web hosting, VOIP, and other internet services to customers across Australia. Exetel's headquarters are based in offices in North Sydney and its switching centre is in a secure Data Centre facility in the Sydney CBD. Since 2004, Exetel has expanded its coverage to anywhere in Australia where there is an ADSL enabled exchange. Exetel now has over 60,000+ residential and small business broadband users located in every state and territory.

Exetel resells products from Telstra (the incumbent), Optus, Verizon, Powertel, SPT, & Unwired. Many of the larger Australian ISPs have chosen to deploy their own infrastructure (including wireless) in order to provide faster and less expensive services than Telstra (the incumbent) offers. Exetel is a large ISP but has chosen not to deploy its own infrastructure (apart from its own switching centre). Instead, it is a wholesale customer of several competitors.

History

Exetel’s office and PoP have operated out of the same Sydney CBD location since entering the market. However, a Melbourne PoP began operating on 15 June 2007 with another planned for Brisbane.

• 2002: Exetel Pty Ltd was established to provide communications consultancy to smaller communications companies.
• December 2003: Exetel's directors decided to provide internet and telephone services themselves rather than advising other companies.
• February 2004: Exetel began offering ADSL services to NSW users. Currently Exetel employs 30 people and its revenue in the year ending 30th June 2006 was projected to be a little over $23,000,000 compared with revenue of a little over $11,000,000 in the year ending 30th June 2005. Exetel has been profitable in each of its years of operation to date and is on track to meet its profit forecasts for the current financial year.
• July 2006: Exetel begins to sell ADSL2+ services to NSW residents with ADSL2+ capable exchanges, connecting it's first user on July 20.
• June 2007: Melbourne POP comes online. All new Victorian users, or any Victorians requesting a plan change, would be migrated to the new POP

Exetel services

In addition to providing ADSL services to residential users Exetel also provides

1. SHDSL and XDSL services with speeds up to 1000 Mbit/s to medium and large businesses and State and Federal government departments in all Mainland State capital cities.
2. ADSL2+ services in several suburbs
3. wireless broadband services to over 2,500 users around the Sydney metropolitan area.
4. hosting services
5. a range of telephony services including wire line, mobile and VoIP call services.

Exetel has over 1 gigabit of bandwidth linking its customers to Exetel and over 1 gigabit of bandwidth linking Exetel to the national and international internet. Exetel also has a 1 gigabit connecton to the PIPE network. Exetel controls these major links with eight Cisco routers and over 30 application servers.

Policies

Since it began operating, Exetel has implemented various management practices that are atypical of other Australian ISPs, usually to the benefit of its customers.

Bandwidth management

In a country where plan download allowances are somewhat limited and unlimited plans are virtually non-existent, Exetel took the unusual step of providing users with significant "free" data in an attempt to manage its bandwidth more effectively. It actively encourages users to carry out their heavy downloads during what has variously been called the "free", "uncounted" and now "off-peak" period. Times and allowances during this period have also varied. As at 1 July 2007 the off-peak period extended from midnight to midday AEST and the allowance within this period was 40GB per month. On 17 September 2007 Exetel announced that, effective 1 November 2007, the allowance would increase to 48GB per month. This period and its allowance is available to all Exetel customers, except those on low-usage non-contract plans.

Copyright issues

In 2005, legal action by MIPI against another ISP resulted in a third ISP being found guilty of breaching copyright by allowing hosting of illegally acquired content. As a direct result of this Exetel believed it necessary to monitor content stored on servers under its control. On 16 March 2005 it notified its customers that it would begin implementing a policy of deleting certain multimedia files from user webspaces unless the user requested exemption from the deletion process in a manner detailed in the announcement. In June 2007, this policy was reported on briefly after a post was made on Boing Boing, a US blog site. On 16 July 2007 an Australian newspaper reported on the policy.

External links

• Exetel's official site
• Exetel's forum on Whirlpool

References

1. "Melbourne And Brisbane PoPs". (Exetel user Help Forums - Melbourne PoP goes live)
2. "Melbourne And Brisbane PoPs". (Exetel user Help Forums)
3. "New Events, Issues And Changes". (May 7th 2007 Exetel Adds PoPs In Victoria And Queensland)
4. "broadband choice". Whirlpool. Retrieved 20 September 2007. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |accessdate= (help)
5. "Changes To Exetel Broadband Plans". Exetel. 17 September 2007.
6. "Exetel website". (refer plan table pages)
7. "Notice to Exetel Customers Using Exetel Free Web Space". Exetel Pty Ltd. 2005-03-16.
8. Eric Bangeman, ""ISP as copyright cop: Aussie ISP kills all user multimedia files nightly"". Ars Technica. 2007-06-27.
9. David Flynn, ""A few notes of caution"". The Age. July 16, 2007.

• Internet service providers
• Internet service providers of Australia