ISP Pacific Internet has announced it is meeting growing demand for its premium broadband DSL offering by partnering with Optus.
The deal, signed last week, expands the geographic reach of its existing range by 45%, making its premium-grade broadband available to more Australian businesses than ever before.
Director Dennis Muscat says over the past 12 months the ISP has experienced a 40% increase in uptake for its premium service as "technically advanced" SMEs look beyond the regular DSL network for enhanced speeds and performance assurances.
"We're pleased to see businesses running mission critical broadband applications, such as private networks and voice-over-Internet protocol (VoIP), are now adopting more sophisticated broadband," he says.
"By partnering with Optus, we can now offer customers access to a very large premium network in Australia, reaching the majority of Australian businesses with significant coverage across capital cities and key regional centres."
NEC NEXTEP Broadband, Pacific Internet's premium wholesale provider since May 2002, will continue to provide connectivity for its premium offering.
"Pacific Internet is a telco-independent Internet communications service provider and our strategy involves working with best-of-breed wholesale partners to offer comprehensive broadband connectivity options," Muscat says.
Optus' infrastructure has been integrated into Pacific Internet's existing premium broadband DSL range, with NEC NEXTEP's.
Customer's site locations together with their speed and contention ratio selections determine which wholesalers' network is used.
Pacific Internet's business consultants design solutions for customers' individual needs. The plans feature speeds from 512K/256K up to 4Mb/512K for ADSL services and 512K/512K up to 2Mb/2Mb for SHDSL services. The contention ratios range from 1:1 up to 20:1.
A range of packages have been created from 10GB of data with affordable excess options. Most services come with service level agreements (SLA) of 99.9% and a small number of plans come with a SLA of 99.2%.
A range of customisation options and value-added services, such as traffic prioritisation for latency sensitive applications, are also available.