Friday, March 17, 2006

Globalisation - Australian pipe power

Former PPTs and the power of pipes, has been a bit of a theme for the BackChannel team lately with clients showing interest in the coverage of smaller regional network operators.

This need to own fibre or copper to ensure that your company has a future, was recently highlighted by the re-merge of AT&T and BellSouth.

Unlike Europe and the USA, where government sell-offs, breakups and deregulation, have to some extent curbed the power of the former PTTs. Australia' is running about 20 years behind with the Howard government just now planning to sell it's controlling share in Telstra.

Australia, where the government has been accussed of letting Telstra ride rough-shod over the regulator, where Telstra has managed to defend it's corner.

BackChannel shows Telstra retaining a dominant position with 32% of business Dedicated Internet Access, where they pretty much own all the pipes, fiber and copper.

But despite what the alt nets would have you believe, Telstra don;t have it all their own way. Where competition is free of the constraints of access, that position is strongly challenged with business hosting market share at just 10% for Telstra noticeably behind OPTUS and WebCentral.

It is clear that the majority of ASX200 companies prefer to host with providers who offer a specialist, or more personal service.

This data was collected on the 30th January 2006 using BackChannels proprietary search engine and covers the primary web hosting of the Australias most significant companies.

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