Melbourne, Victoria - March 28, 2016. A new Internet Service Provider (ISP) is set to become the next role model for business disruption to benefit consumers; offering blistering fast broadband to Australian households and businesses without the need for an NBN connection.
Appropriately named Lightning Broadband, the service evolved from group of frustrated internet users and a successful community-led pilot project in Melbourne. It is now being rolled-out across selected suburbs in Melbourne with plans to go national soon.
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Australian-owned and operated, Lightning Broadband is in many cases faster and cheaper than the NBN. The service will also be made available in areas where the NBN is yet to gain a foothold - or may ever do.
"When people experience the level of speed, service and pricing we can offer, they will wonder why this hasn’t been offered earlier," said Lightning Broadband CEO Jeremy Rich.
"We use tried and tested technology along with some clever engineering to offer our services; which we'll roll out wherever we find sufficient demand. We expect to become a national provider over the coming year or so."
Lightning Broadband’s technology involves providing a direct optical fibre and/or hybrid fibre + wireless broadband connection to the home or business user – bypassing the slower and aging copper wire connections that link most homes in Australia to the internet from their street.
One of the key markets for Lightning Broadband includes the many apartment buildings and residential developments across Australia that at best only have ADSL+ connectivity. Lightning Broadband is able to easily retrofit these developments to bring them "up to speed" - and at zero cost to building owners, developer and body corporates.
Lightning Broadband offers connection speeds of up to 1,000 Mbps - far surpassing NBN Tier 5 and dozens of times faster than the maximum speed of ADSL2+. The services are also low-latency; which is the measure of time delay from one point of a network to another.
Another standout feature of the service is symmetrical connections; meaning the upload rate is the same as the download speed. Upload speeds are where the NBN falls down badly, offering just a fraction of the download rate.
For home users, the company says it provides extremely competitive pricing and a straightforward, robust fixed wireless service offering unlimited data without shaping; plus a Voice over IP (VoIP) phone option.
Commercial customers are supplied dedicated equipment and benefit from uncontended symmetrical connections; plus receive unlimited data, priority support and a range of other benefits.
"We're going to help pull Australia into the 21st century when it comes to broadband," says Mr. Rich.
And the country needs it – Australia is currently ranked 48th in the world in terms of average Internet connection speeds. This is a slip of a few places compared to early last year. Even though the NBN is slowly rolling out across the nation; Australia is not keeping pace with improvements in other parts of the world.
"It's a rather sad state of affairs that such a clever country is still behind so many others with internet access speeds - it's generally holding the nation back and stifling innovation. These are frustrations I'm pleased to say that our customers simply don't experience," states Mr. Rich.
In addition to being YouTube HD-Verified, Lightning Broadband is also able to handle the heavy demands of 4K (UHD, Ultra HD) video.
The company offers a free internet speed test so Australians can gauge their current broadband connection rate and how much faster it could be using its services.
ABOUT LIGHTNING BROADBAND
Proudly Australian-owned, operated and staffed; ultra-reliable and super-fast internet is Lightning Broadband's core focus – and its passion. The company evolved from Lynham Networks; a community-led project that completed a successful pilot program of direct fibre and hybrid wireless + fibre broadband technology in Victoria in 2014.
Building on that success, Lightning Broadband is now readying to start rolling out low-latency and blazing-fast Internet access across Australia.
Further information about the company can be viewed here.
