TransACT steals a march in internet TV

Ok, so you said:

Grrrr said :

Never going to happen. Firstly, “cable” from TransACT is VDSL. They rolled out VDSL2 to some new apartment complexes and they claimed a year or more ago they’re upgrading the VDSL network to VDSL2 – but no signs of it happening. They put their own ASDL DSLAMs (MSANs?) into most (all?) of the exchanges in Canberra, so they’ve covered the rest of town that way – except for the new suburbs getting FTTH.

There’s nothing physically stopping them rolling the copper cable for VDSL into your house underground, just like the fibres are coming. It’s just a cable much like your current phone line, and VDSL2 is fast – almost as fast as current FTTH offerings, but long term cannot match it.

Anyway, TransACT just won’t spend the money rolling out further VDSL(2), especially with the threat of an FTTH NBN coming “soon” to cut into their profits.

Phew.

Firstly – The current transact cable network is VDSL, yes – and is entirely capable of running VDSL2 (which is a solid 30meg connection, capable of much higher than that as they stagger the speeds up) as it requires NO changes to the cable already in place – but what the major difference is, and why it’s been done in “some” apartment complexes (Pre cabled MDU’s Specifically) and not to homes in the old cable suburbs is simply because the cable is fibre-optic, and is in fact identical to the fibre-to-the-home/premise cabling that is in the NBN new suburbs, but the difference is The fibre stops in the node (telephone/power poles or little boxes in underground areas) and is then connected via a coaxial cable, ie. copper, to the house. in a FTTH area the fibre goes all the way to the wall of the house and goes into an Optical Network Terminator which distributes it through ethernet cable, basically – and in a pre cabled MDU the fibre goes into the patch bay (usually in the basement or somesuch of the complex – and is then fed again via ether net cable to the various apartments. hence they can handle 30 meg and 100 meg speeds. but upgrading the cabled suburbs means having to install ONT’s on all the houses and run fibre from the node to the house. the cost of doing this is… High. How high? say one street with 50 houses in it? Over 500 thousand but under a million dollars, depending on numerous factors, but would average out around there. There’s no way Transact could afford it. and when was the last time ANY other telco put any new Infrastructure down in the ACT? and if they did it was laughable copper wire. TA is the only corp that has, as far as i’m aware.
So – Here’s why the government buying buys TA’s old cable infrastructure for the NBN is a good thing- they then pay to get the ONT’s and Fibre lines from the node to the premise – and then everbody in those areas gets FTTP! same as the new suburbs already have like forde, bonner crace etc… but with a minimum of fuss.

I Live in franklin stage 3, started out with the 30meg FTTH connection, decided to splash out when i got a raise and upgraded to the 100megabit connection. i’ve got grapevine because they don’t have contention issues like 8 out of 10 of the other ISP’s available on the network do, and it runs at 80 megabit 90% of the time, the lowest it’s ever gone is 64 something. that’s the *lowest*. so my lowest speed is 3 times faster than the top speed ADSL2+ is capable of,which only a tiny percentage of ADSL2+ users actually get, seeing as though you have to be about 200 metres from the exchange to get it.
Sure, it’s kinda pricey compared to other broadband.
but i download good torrents at 7-9 megabytes a second. I downloaded a 4.6gig movie in under 10 mins the last week.
i shit you not.
plus the latency is massively reduced because it’s over fibreoptic.
gaming is real good now, except i realise how shit the servers are a lot of games are on.
i got free install, and $600 credit. and of course the infamous bundle discount.

i probably sound like a transact salesman, but i don’t really care. i was seriously unimpressed with them till i moved and got this FTTP shiz, but now i love them and want to have their babies.

So stop whining. or go use bloody telstra or optus – they’re crap service, crap customer service, and they are too big to give a crap about individual customers.
TPG and a numbe of other Companies are very cheap, and very good (never had any probs with TPG for 4 years) but, they don’t have 100 megabit yet. no-one else in the ACT does.

Grrrr said :

Thoroughly Smashed said :

Well bugger me senseless, you can get iiNet through TransACT these days. Now I’m sure someone’s going to tell me it’s been that way for years…

Yes, you COULD get iiNet on TransACT but you wouldn’t. You’d either get iiNet through their own DSLAMs, or you’d get a different TransACT ISP if you couldn’t get ADSL2+ from a non-TransACT ISP. iiNet’s plans are too expensive and don’t offer shaping instead of excess usage charges – they are way overdue for revision.

iiNet became a TransACT ISP with the purchase of WebOne in early 2003.

Oh right, there had to be a catch didn’t there.

Thoroughly Smashed said :

Well bugger me senseless, you can get iiNet through TransACT these days. Now I’m sure someone’s going to tell me it’s been that way for years…

Yes, you COULD get iiNet on TransACT but you wouldn’t. You’d either get iiNet through their own DSLAMs, or you’d get a different TransACT ISP if you couldn’t get ADSL2+ from a non-TransACT ISP. iiNet’s plans are too expensive and don’t offer shaping instead of excess usage charges – they are way overdue for revision.

iiNet became a TransACT ISP with the purchase of WebOne in early 2003.

Thoroughly Smashed said :

Good: subscribers will finally have access to the country’s better quality ISPs.

Well bugger me senseless, you can get iiNet through TransACT these days. Now I’m sure someone’s going to tell me it’s been that way for years…

I don’t see anything about it on the crimes website, and this has popped up (and been slapped down) numerous times before .. but if it is true I hope they only buy the FTTH network. The rest is a waste of taxpayers’ money.

steveu said :

I would be surprised if TransACT gets bought out…and being a safe labour seat, dont expect to see the NBN anytime soon.

The ACT Government is an indirect owner in TransACT through ACTEW. They would like to get their investment back before it becomes worthless.

Grrrr said :

Mathman – got a source for that report? Last I heard NBN weren’t interested in TransACT’s crappy network. The only thing that would interest NBN is TransACT’s FTTH which is only located in a couple of suburbs, and perhaps a few of their fibre runs around town.

Canberra Times over the weekend.

Mathman said :

This is both good and bad news for TransACT subscribers. Good in that you may be the first to receive the NBN. Bad in that you probably won’t receive direct fibre to your home until after the rest of the country is connected up.

Good: subscribers will finally have access to the country’s better quality ISPs.

Oh, while I’m ranting: the new TransACT PVR comes with a 150gig HDD, upgradeable to 320gig – seriously???

My cheapo ($400, I think) PVR from 2004 came with an 80gig HDD. It was replaced a year or more ago with a HD unit that came with a 320gig HDD, approx cost $300. I just upgraded the HDD myself to 1.5TB at a cost to me of $130.

I guess that the “new TransTV” will be MPEG4 which fits more hours-per-meg than free-to-air DVB’s MPEG2 – but still, 150gig is a bit measly.

Johnboy, you made the same mistake reporting this as everyone else. It’s not Internet TV, it’s IPTV. TransACT ARE a Cable TV provider – it’s just that their delivery mechanism is IP instead of RF. It isn’t delivered over the Internet, it comes on a separate, private network.

Also, this product is separate from their “Internet” service – which is really a data-link service that still requires you to order service from an ISP. TransACT also happen to now own 100% of the ISP Grapevine, which must piss off the rest of the TransACT-based ISPs. Competing with your resellers isn’t nice – just ask Apple’s resellers anywhere that Apple just opened up their own retail store.

Furthermore, this “new” IPTV service is just an upgrade (albeit a very expensive one) on their near-decade-old IP-based cable-TV service. It will be basically the same as before, except your STB will have PVR functionality, and the content will be HD instead of SD (about bloody time.)

There’s no mention of new content.

Mathman said :

In other TransACT related news, its been reported that TransACT is close to finalising negotiations to sell its network to the National Broadband Network.

Mathman – got a source for that report? Last I heard NBN weren’t interested in TransACT’s crappy network. The only thing that would interest NBN is TransACT’s FTTH which is only located in a couple of suburbs, and perhaps a few of their fibre runs around town.

steveu said :

I would be glad if TransACT finished what it started and rolled out cable to the rest of Canberra…that would be a good start. At the end of the day their core business model always depended on power poles being at premises.

Never going to happen. Firstly, “cable” from TransACT is VDSL. They rolled out VDSL2 to some new apartment complexes and they claimed a year or more ago they’re upgrading the VDSL network to VDSL2 – but no signs of it happening. They put their own ASDL DSLAMs (MSANs?) into most (all?) of the exchanges in Canberra, so they’ve covered the rest of town that way – except for the new suburbs getting FTTH.

There’s nothing physically stopping them rolling the copper cable for VDSL into your house underground, just like the fibres are coming. It’s just a cable much like your current phone line, and VDSL2 is fast – almost as fast as current FTTH offerings, but long term cannot match it.

Anyway, TransACT just won’t spend the money rolling out further VDSL(2), especially with the threat of an FTTH NBN coming “soon” to cut into their profits.

Phew.

TransACT never rolled out to my suburbs. With NBN, TransACT will be dead. Don’t get on that bandwagon folks.