NBN Co has announced it will offer telecommunications and internet service providers the ability to tailor its high-speed broadband services to better meet the needs of Small Office/Home Office (SOHO) businesses and other SMEs.
NBN Co has outlined wholesale plans designed to allow telcos and ISPs to offer packages for small business that enable them to use their broadband for quality voice services, and to offer enhanced service levels to support longer hours of business operation.
According to NBN Co’s head of product development and industry relations Jim Hassell, the services aim to offer more incremental pricing tiers to enable a telecommunications or internet service provider to offer a wider range of plans at different price points to suit the individual needs of businesses of varying sizes.
“Our research indicates that many home office/small office operators and small businesses are currently using standard residential services for their telephone or broadband, or opting for business-grade offerings over copper-based ADSL2+ services.”
“Beyond this, for larger small businesses, there is a quite a big jump to business-grade fibre-based services. For example, there are small design and video production companies that need to send large files to their customers, which are paying for services designed for much bigger businesses.”
NBN Co will provide wholesale level speeds of up to 40 Mbps at the layer 2 level in its small business offering.
“Many small businesses also operate long hours or on the weekend, so we plan to add extended hours to our service level agreement – from 7am to 9pm seven days a week, with a one hour response time and 12-hour restoration time in metro areas,” Hassell added.
