Naked ADSL by Christmas

Naked ADSL by Christmas

By Nathan Statz

August 21, 2007: Speaking at the AFR broadband conference in Sydney, AAPT CEO Paul Broad has confirmed that Australia will see naked DSL by the end of the year.

Naked ADSL refers to an ADSL service without an actual telephone account, put simply it’s an ADSL line without a dial tone to make phone calls with. For some businesses this won’t seem to make much of a splash in the pool of current broadband offerings, for others who are already on the Voice Over Internet Protocol (VOIP) telephone gravy train its music to their ears.

Large numbers of businesses run up massive telephone expenses so the principle of VOIP is attractive, yet the idea of untangling existing complex phone networks prevents a quick switch. Combine this with naked ADSL products on the verge of release and you have a situation for extremely lucrative bundling options. According to Broad the wave of future developments is coming whether organisations want it too or not.

Existing VOIP providers in Australia offer very cheap calls to any landline in Australia, avoiding hefty STD charges which can be substantial for some businesses. Packaged as part of a naked ADSL package, VOIP can become much more attractive, particularly when internet service providers offer free calls between the same providers. This means businesses with multiple branches across Australia can call each other for free and anyone not with the same provider for a cheap rate.

According to Broad, all of these features, coupled with the complete abandonment of the traditional copper line could mean major market losses for landline providers such as Telstra.

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