Singtel Optus Pty Limited d/b/a Optus is the second largest telecommunications company in Australia. It is a wholly owned subsidiary of Singtel since 2001. The company primarily trades under the Optus brand, while maintaining several wholly owned subsidiary brands, such as Virgin Mobile Australia in the mobile telephony market, Uecomm in the network services market and Alphawest in the ICT services sector.
iiNet Limited is Australia's second-largest internet service provider with more than 1.3 million customers as of 15 August 2011. It was acquired by TPG Telecom in September 2015 for $1.56 billion, but retained its retail brand name in the market. Its subsidiaries include Internode, Westnet, AAPT Limited, Adam Internet, TransACT and Netspace. Their focus is primarily on ADSL-based Internet access, using their own ADSL2+ infrastructure, reselling Telstra ADSL services and more recently in reselling the NBN. iiNet also provides optical-fibre, dial-up, and voice services.
Whirlpool is an independent Australian website founded in 1998. Since then, it has grown significantly and has over 820,000 registered accounts. Primarily a discussion forum, some extra functionality such as Broadband Choice was included, although this functionality has been removed from the site.
Internode Pty Ltd is an Australian Internet service provider (ISP) that provides ADSL and NBN broadband Internet access, business-class access, web hosting, co-location, Voice over IP, and a variety of related services.
ITU G.992.5 is an International Telecommunication Union standard for asymmetric digital subscriber line (ADSL) broadband Internet access. The standard has a maximum theoretical download speed of 24 Mbit/s. Utilizing G.992.5 Annex M upload speeds of 3.3 Mbit/s can be achieved.
A data cap, often erroneously referred to as a bandwidth cap, is an artificial restriction imposed on the transfer of data over a network. In particular, it refers to policies imposed by an internet service provider in order to limit customers' usage of their services; typically, exceeding a data cap would require the subscriber to pay additional fees based on whether they have exceeded this limit. Implementation of a bandwidth cap is sometimes termed a fair access policy, fair usage policy, or usage-based billing by ISPs.
TransACT is the trading name of TransACT Capital Communications, an Australian telecommunications company based in Canberra which provides broadband internet access, fixed telephony, cable television services, and mobile phone services in Canberra and a subset of these services in Queanbeyan, throughout South-east New South Wales and in Victoria.
Exetel is an Australian ISP which provides ADSL, web hosting, VoIP, and other internet services to customers across Australia. Exetel's headquarters are in offices in North Sydney, and its switching centres are distributed in capital city secure data centre facilities around mainland Australia. Exetel has 300,000+ residential and business customers.
UK Online was a consumer Internet service provider that operated within the UK, and began as a dial-up provider in 1994. Network provider Easynet acquired the company in 1996, and were in turn acquired by BSkyB in 2005. The service was closed down in January 2011.
Permanent Internet access was first available in Australia to universities via AARNet in 1989. Pegasus Networks pioneered public use in June 1989. The first commercial dial-up Internet Service Provider (ISP) appeared in capital cities soon after, and by the mid-1990s almost the entire country had a range of choices of dial-up ISPs. Today, Internet access is available through a range of technologies, i.e. hybrid fibre coaxial cable, Digital Subscriber Line (DSL), Integrated Services Digital Network (ISDN) and satellite Internet. The Australian Government, in partnership with the industrial sector, began rolling out a nationwide Fibre to the Premises (FTTP) and improved fixed wireless and satellite access through the National Broadband Network in July 2009. Subsequently, the roll out was down graded to a Multi-Technology Mix on the promise of it being less expensive with earlier completion.
Internet television in Australia is the digital distribution of movies and television content via the Internet. In Australia, Internet television is provided by five major pay-per-view providers, in addition to several niche television streaming services. Australia's five major free-to-air television networks all offer catch up TV of previously broadcast content to watch via the Internet or via podcasts - drawing on both domestic and foreign content. A feature of Internet television is that a user can view TV or video on demand. Some distributors provide content as downloads, whiles other streaming media; the main difference being that with downloads the end-user must have storage capacity for the content on their device and must wait for the download to be completed before the content can be viewed, while streamed content can be viewed almost immediately, but is not stored for a later second viewing.
Fetch TV is an Australian IPTV provider that delivers a subscription television service over a user's regular internet service. Fetch TV launched in 2010, backed by its Malaysian parent Astro All Asia Networks, which owns 75% in the company.
Westnet is a Perth-based Australian telecommunications company providing broadband ADSL, broadband ADSL2+, satellite broadband, dialup Internet, telephony and web-hosting services to homes and businesses across Australia.
Zero-rating is the practice of providing Internet access without financial cost under certain conditions, such as by only permitting access to certain websites or by subsidizing the service with advertising. Commentators discussing zero rating often present it as a subtopic of net neutrality. While most sources report that use of zero-rating is contrary to the principle of net neutrality, there are mixed opinions among advocates of net neutrality about the extent to which people can benefit from zero-rating programs while retaining net neutrality protections. Supporters of zero-rating argue that it enables consumers to make choices to access more data and leads to more people using online services, but critics believe zero-rating exploits the poor, creates opportunities for censorship, and disrupts the free market.
MyRepublic is a multinational Internet company headquartered in Singapore. The company was formed to leverage Singapore's Next Generation Nationwide Broadband Network. Since its initial launch in 2011, the company has expanded to three other countries - Australia, New Zealand and Indonesia. MyRepublic primarily offers fibre broadband services in all four countries as well as ADSL plans in Australia, VDSL services in New Zealand, and cable TV packages in Indonesia. The company has a combined subscriber base of 200,000 across the four countries.
Aussie Broadband is an Australian telecommunications carrier (ISP) that provides internet, web hosting, mobile and other telephony services. The company was formed in 2008 after the merger of Wideband Networks and Westvic Broadband.
Clear Networks is a licensed Australian telecommunications carrier and ISP that provides NBN Fibre, Wireless, NBN Sky Muster Satellite services, and legacy IPSTAR Satellite services. Clear Networks is headquartered in Blackburn North, Victoria.
