Australia - Broadband - DSL Market, Overview, Statistics and Providers

Synopsis

Though there are more than 600 Internet Service Providers in Australia, the retail fixed broadband market is dominated by a small number of firms. Telstra provides nearly 43% of services and has more than four times as many retail subscribers as the second largest player, Optus, with around 11% of the market. iiNet and TPG each holds around 8% of the market, and Primus holds an estimated 6%. The remaining 24% of the market is shared between the remaining 600-plus small and medium-sized providers.

Consolidation in the retail ISP market has occurred with a number of mergers in the last two years. The most notable of these deals was between iiNet and Westnet, between TPG, Soul and Chariot Internet along with TPG and Pipe Networks and, in early 2010, iiNet also acquired Melbourne-based ISP Netspace.

Of critical importance to ISPs is whether to further invest in DSLAM infrastructure as the fibre optic-based national broadband network is built. A flattening of the investments started to occur in late 2009, early 2010. In the longer term, the NBN may render this investment obsolete as subscribers are migrated to the fibre network.

Table of Contents

• 1. Synopsis
• 2. Background
• 3. Overview of the National Broadband Network (NBN)
• 4. Regulatory environment - analysis
  • 4.1 The impact of fibre optic networks on DSL regulation
  • 4.2 Unbundling of the Local Loop (ULL) and line sharing
• 5. DSL infrastructure
  • 5.1 Overview
  • 5.2 Tool for competitors
  • 5.3 DSLAM infrastructure
    • 5.3.1 Key providers
    • 5.3.2 ADSL2+ enabled exchanges
• 6. Brief overview of Broadband providers
• 7. Related reports

• Table 1 – Number of infrastructure providers by number of ADSL-enabled exchanges – 2008; 2010
• Table 2 – Number of DSLAMs by provider – 2006 - 2010
• Table 3 – Number of ADSL and ADSL2+-enabled exchanges - January 2010
• Table 4 – Broadband DSL retail subscribers by major provider – 2004 - 2010
• Table 5 – ADSL2+ subscribers by provider – 2006 - 2009