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TELSTRA has begun upgrading its ADSL equipment to deliver internet services at speeds up to 16 times faster than are currently available.
The carrier revealed the plan as South Australian internet service provider Internode launched Australia's first ADSL2 service today, which could deliver services five times faster than Telstra's ADSL.
Other ISPs are also scrambling to boost ADSL speeds.
Telstra spokesperson Patrick O'Beirne said the carrier expected to install DSL equipment capable of up to 24Mbps in all exchanges by mid-2006.
The new equipment would support the next-generation ADSL2+ standard, expected to be ratified by the Australian Communication Industry Forum later this year, Mr O'Beirne said.
Telstra was unable to say when the service would be made available commercially.
Services such as video-on-demand and voice over internet protocol telephony were "still in their embryonic phases", Mr O'Beirne said.
"Plans aren't established because the demand's not there at this stage," he said.
Internet service providers using their own ADSL equipment have pushed the carrier into lifting a 1.5Mbps cap on its services.
Agile Communications, the wholesale arm of Internode, began accepting customer orders for Australia's first ADSL2 service today following moves by iiNet and iPrimus to push the technical limits of DSL technology by offering internet access at speeds above Telstra's technical limit.
Internode chief Simon Hackett said ADSL equipment currently in use across Australia was technically capable of delivering internet services much faster than 1.5Mbps, the maximum Telstra allowed on its network.
"The Telstra infrastructure could be running at 8Mbps tomorrow with the stroke of a pen. A million customers could have it tomorrow. It's a business decision not a technical one," Mr Hackett said.
IiNet has started bundling telephony packages with ADSL services at speeds up to 8Mbps and iPrimus offers internet access at speeds up to 2Mbps.
ADSL2, an advance over ADSL, is capable of delivering 12Mbps at distances up to 1.5km from an exchange.
Mr Hackett said the ISP had become frustrated with Telstra's decision to maintain the speed limit of 1.5Mbps on its ADSL infrastructure. Telstra is believed to use the cap to guarantee a minimum level of service.
"There's something catalytic about doing this," Mr Hackett said.
"We're going to do a lot of our own our roll-out but we expect it will ultimately embarrass Telstra into speeding up its offering for everyone, including us."
Internode turned on ADSL2 exchanges across South Australia and one Melbourne CBD location last week.
The ISP hopes to roll out equipment to enable ADSL2 across another 35 to 40 exchanges in metropolitan Melbourne, Sydney, Brisbane and Adelaide by September.
IPrimus general manager Campbell Sallabank took some of the wind out of Internode's sails.
"Agile is probably trying to get a bit of a publicity leg-up by raising the flag a bit before some others," he said. IPrimus was expected to follow in Telstra's footsteps, skipping the ADSL2 standard and jumping straight to ADSL2.
Optus was non-committal on the new equipment standards. "The ADSL and ADSL2+ standards provide opportunities to increase broadband performance.
"Optus is finalising plans for a network build and will ensure that the equipment and the modems provided will be capable of supporting superior performance standards," a spokesperson said.
Echoing comments by iiNet chief Michael Malone last week, Mr Hackett said Internode hoped to establish content deals with movie providers so it could deliver video-on-demand services. "We can't get wholesale access to the cable modem platform – we've tried.
"The only way that we can compete in DVoD is to build it ourselves, and that's a lot of what this is about," Mr Hackett said.
The ADSL2 service would be sufficient to enable Internode to compete with the likes of Foxtel Digital, he said.
"Speeds of 12Mbps don't have so much to do with downloading that Linux file faster. It's much more to do with television. About 4Mbps is enough to do high-definition television," Mr Hackett said.
It's not clear how many ISPs will be able to support the higher speeds.
Mr Hackett said Agile had supported the ADSL2 introduction by installing further back-haul links to the US.
"We've built an enormous great backbone behind this that can scale to handle it," he said.
 News source: Australian IT
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