Great growth opportunities for 2011
The release of Internode’s Fetch TV IPTV service and the introduction of new services, such as mobile voice, will enable Internode to provide an even broader range of services to its customers.
Internode CEO Patrick Tapper said the broadband market had fundamentally changed during 2010. "We saw the end of the rapid growth that occurred since 2005," he said.
"These changes present great opportunities for us. Internode has the right fundamentals of good customer service and a strong technology foundation and our customers have welcomed the service bundles that we launched during the past year."
"While the market is in a commodity cycle at the moment, where every service provider is fighting for market share, Internode believes that increased product diversification and a continued focus on excellent customer service will maintain our growth in the coming year."
Internode is Australia's largest privately owned broadband service provider, with 450 employees and more than 190,000 customers nationally using its internationally-linked IPv6-enabled network. During the past 18 months, the company has repeatedly topped customer satisfaction surveys conducted by independent organisations including Roy Morgan Research, Canstar Blue, PC Authority, and Choice.
Mr. Tapper said the major technology trends that would drive the industry during 2011 included:
- The introduction of new services such as IPTV on the broadband platform
- Increased product bundling of broadband, voice and video services
- The growing delivery footprint of the National Broadband Network (NBN).
"Internode already has a strong alignment with the NBN," he said. "Just as we've begun in Tasmania, you can expect Internode to be 'on the NBN' everywhere and anywhere the NBN is - all the time."
Mr. Tapper said other areas of strong activity during 2011 would be data centres and infrastructure migration. "We've had a drought of data centre space in Adelaide and across the country for a while," he said.
"I think that area will move fast with Bevan Slattery's NextDC start-up, Marty Gauvin's Tier5 and Macquarie Telecom all very active, driven by demand for co-location and cloud computing services."
"2011 should also be a good year for system integrators and consultants as a lot of system infrastructure is out of date due to GFC-caused deferrals and general under-investment. Two more years have gone by, yet the demand on IT function and capability within businesses has grown, as has the need for its closer alignment with the business."
"There will be a lot of movement in this arena as many companies either proactively migrate, or are forced to look at their infrastructure. They will need to decide whether to keep IT in-house or make it external. As companies play catch-up from the GFC, there's a huge opportunity for system integrators and good computer people to assist the migration from outmoded in-house systems to cloud-style services."
"Although Internode does not sell services at this application level, it is set to benefit from this trend as we provide platforms and co-lo services to organisations that support those services."
"We're not expecting any huge shake-ups in the coming year: Broadband plans will get bigger data quotas and services will become more reliable, but fundamental dynamics will not change."