iiNet to buy TransACT?

Grail said :

dungfungus said :

This maybe is great news for ratepayers because we might get back the $80 million odd that Actew and their associate companies have written off investing in TransACT.

There are a lot of investors out there who don’t understand the difference between “real estate” and “infrastructure”. You don’t make a profit trading infrastructure: the whole point is that you write off that capital expenditure with the aim of making a profit on the services provided: this is almost exactly the opposite of real estate where you rent the place out in the short term to offset your losses, with the aim being to make money from selling the property once its value has increased.

Your point regarding Actew blowing our $80 million is?

thatsnotme said :

My question is why, with a business that requires reliable internet connectivity, this situation was allowed to go on for 4 years? Surely issues like this would have caused you to investigate alternatives that were more reliable and met your business needs?

Is it not also possible, that the cause of some of these issues, could be the relationship between TransACT (who, it seems, are also an ISP under a different name) and the ISP, and that iiNet may have been having difficulty with this relationship? The fact that they have mentioned withdrawing from their relationship with TransACT, and not expanding their services through them, seems to suggest that they just couldn’t operate their business properly through the TransACT network.

That’s something I’d believe, too. I’m an Internode customer, on an ADSL2+ connection, and I’ve seen the question asked on Whirlpool in the past – ‘why aren’t Internode a TransACT ISP?’ It seems that TransACT just weren’t interested in them providing services on their network, and eventually Internode just gave up – not surprising really, given the size of the Canberra market.

The sooner TransACT is run by a mob with half a clue, the better we’ll be. Until it’s sold off to the NBN at least (if they even want it).

This. All of it.

Internode didn’t become a TransACT ISP mostly because they want Layer 2 connectivity (as is typical of any resold broadband service) and TransACT only provide Layer 3.

iiNet were not interested in ramping up their TransACT operations probably because it’s a lot cheaper for them to have a customer on their own port (iiNet DSLAMs) than on a TransACT port. L2/L3 night have been part of it, too.

dungfungus said :

This maybe is great news for ratepayers because we might get back the $80 million odd that Actew and their associate companies have written off investing in TransACT.

There are a lot of investors out there who don’t understand the difference between “real estate” and “infrastructure”. You don’t make a profit trading infrastructure: the whole point is that you write off that capital expenditure with the aim of making a profit on the services provided: this is almost exactly the opposite of real estate where you rent the place out in the short term to offset your losses, with the aim being to make money from selling the property once its value has increased.

schmeah said :

great, so I just signed up for bundling services and spent all day yesterday trying to get onto Grapevine to assist with setting up my account .. and all my phone calls and emails went unanswered despite how long I waited on the phone.

Do you think they are trying to tell you something?

great, so I just signed up for bundling services and spent all day yesterday trying to get onto Grapevine to assist with setting up my account .. and all my phone calls and emails went unanswered despite how long I waited on the phone.

dungfungus said :

This maybe is great news for ratepayers because we might get back the $80 million odd that Actew and their associate companies have written off investing in TransACT. Can the ACT Government then please legislate to stop them rushing off to blow our money into another crazy scheme?
S***! – I just remembered someone with strong Actew connections is looking for $30 million for an ampitheatre in the bush. Oh well, I guess we will have to settle for $50 million.

Ecowise, Ecowise VIC and Grapevine, god bless your cotton socks ACTEW

No wonder their books are no longer available to the public.

sebrey said :

I find this very hard to believe. As a long time iinet customer with work, and over the last 4 odd years through Transact broadband with iinet ISP, we have gone away from them, due to their unreliabilty and thieving over use charges. IINET were only able to supply a 40Gb/month connection, and as we went over this we would get a notice a week after the fact with a $1000 over use bill and service suspension without notice. When contacted, the money paid, their stupid system would run again for a few hours and disconnect again, due to a fault in their system not applying the payment. In a business that requires reliable internet connectivity this was not satisfactory.
IINET’s information when questioned regarding upping our bandwidth was that they were moving away from the Transact network and only supporting the bear minimum with existing clients.

For my sake I hope they don’t get to take over Transact.

My question is why, with a business that requires reliable internet connectivity, this situation was allowed to go on for 4 years? Surely issues like this would have caused you to investigate alternatives that were more reliable and met your business needs?

Is it not also possible, that the cause of some of these issues, could be the relationship between TransACT (who, it seems, are also an ISP under a different name) and the ISP, and that iiNet may have been having difficulty with this relationship? The fact that they have mentioned withdrawing from their relationship with TransACT, and not expanding their services through them, seems to suggest that they just couldn’t operate their business properly through the TransACT network.

That’s something I’d believe, too. I’m an Internode customer, on an ADSL2+ connection, and I’ve seen the question asked on Whirlpool in the past – ‘why aren’t Internode a TransACT ISP?’ It seems that TransACT just weren’t interested in them providing services on their network, and eventually Internode just gave up – not surprising really, given the size of the Canberra market.

The sooner TransACT is run by a mob with half a clue, the better we’ll be. Until it’s sold off to the NBN at least (if they even want it).

Grrrr said :

The more expensive plan has faster line rates. However, some idiot up top of TransACT decided that a recent ACCC ruling meant that they couldn’t advertise line rates anymore.

Ha, that’s got to be one of the most ridiculous things I’ve ever seen! However, this is TransACT we’re talking about, so I find myself believing that this is entirely possible. I don’t suppose you have a link to any info on the ACCC ruling? I’m curious as to what the ACCC could possibly have ruled on to lead to such a stupid decision.

I just find it extraordinary that any company would give potential customers the choice between two different packages (eg, if you just wanted phone and internet, you have the choice between ‘TalkWEB Zoom’ and ‘TalkWEB Rapid’), with absolutely zero explanation of what the difference between the packages is – aside from one being $10 a month more expensive. As far as I can see, the only place on the new website that these packages are mentioned, are in the drop down box where you make that choice. Seems kinda like heading to a restaurant, and getting a menu with ‘Option 1’ and ‘Option 2’ as the only text.

Grrrr said :

There’s no official mention of TransACT being sold either – and TransACT has owned 100% of Grapevine for a little while now, so it seems reasonable to assume Grapevine is included in the sale.

True, the talk of TransACT being sold to iiNet is speculation until an official announcement is made, but it seems like the pieces are all falling in place.

I didn’t realise that Grapevine was 100% owned by TransACT. Given that iiNet are a TransACT ISP, I guess they would just look to transfer all the Grapevine customers over to themselves, and kill off Grapevine as an ISP. It makes no sense to own two separate ISP’s on a network that you also own. It’ll be interesting to see whether iiNet, should they buy TransACT, then go and make iiNet the default choice for ISP, a-la Grapevine – their website almost makes it seem to be your only choice – or if they’re more interested in running it as an open network.

Whatever happens, I can only see the possibility that iiNet purchases TransACT as a positive thing. They can’t possibly make a bigger hash of things than TransACT have for the past 10 years or so!

I find this very hard to believe. As a long time iinet customer with work, and over the last 4 odd years through Transact broadband with iinet ISP, we have gone away from them, due to their unreliabilty and thieving over use charges. IINET were only able to supply a 40Gb/month connection, and as we went over this we would get a notice a week after the fact with a $1000 over use bill and service suspension without notice. When contacted, the money paid, their stupid system would run again for a few hours and disconnect again, due to a fault in their system not applying the payment. In a business that requires reliable internet connectivity this was not satisfactory.
IINET’s information when questioned regarding upping our bandwidth was that they were moving away from the Transact network and only supporting the bear minimum with existing clients.

For my sake I hope they don’t get to take over Transact.

I’ve been on TransACT ever since it arrived in my suburb. It wasn’t a bad deal initially, but they never moved on. It’s been generally reliable, but that’s the best I can say about it. This’ll probably be a good thing.