Exetel
Encyclopedia
Exetel is an Australia
n ISP
which provides ADSL
, web hosting
, VoIP
, and other internet services to customers across Australia. Exetel's headquarters are based in offices in North Sydney
and its switching centre is in a secure Data Centre facility in the Sydney CBD
. Exetel has 110,000+ residential and business customers.
Exetel resells products from NBNCo, Telstra
, Optus
, Verizon Business
, AAPT
& BigAir
. Many of the larger Australian ISPs have chosen to deploy their own infrastructure (including wireless) in order to provide faster and less expensive services than Telstra offers. Exetel does not deploy its own infrastructure outside of its own switching centres. Instead, it is a wholesale customer of Tier 1 wholesale telco providers who provide IP Transit, Intercapital Transmission and various Residential and Business Grade Access Network products that Exetel integrate and manage for its customers.
Exetel donates one third of the profit it makes to various, community based, endangered species protection and regeneration programs around Australia. Almost $450,000 was donated in 2009. Details on all of these programs can be found on the website
It began offering ADSL1 services in mid February 2004, SHDSL corporate services in April 2004 and Wireless Broadband through Unwired
in June 2004. Towards the end of 2004 Exetel added wire line telephony services using the Verizon network and mobile services using the Vodafone
network. Exetel activated its own VoIP switches in March 2006 and began offering ADSL2+ services on 20 July 2006.
Exetel now has PoPs
in New South Wales
, Victoria
, Queensland
, South Australia
, Western Australia
, Tasmania
, Australian Capital Territory
and Auckland
.
On 18 November 2007 Exetel was included in the Deloitte's Rising Star listings as one of the fastest growing 50 Australian technology companies with a cumulative growth of 159% in that two year period.
Currently Exetel employs 50 people in its North Sydney office, 60 people in its Sri Lanka
n office and its revenue in the 2009-10 financial year was a little over A$
55,000,000 compared with revenue of a little over A$49,000,000 in the 2008-09 financial year. Exetel has been profitable in each of its years of operation to date and is on track to meet its profit forecasts for the current financial year.
The service is made up of numerous gaming servers, a website, forum, gaming statistics and a ticketing support system as well as an admin team for each game they host. Hosted games are:
is also provided. Since it began operating Exetel has implemented various practices in an attempt in order to manage this bandwidth including the recent implementation of a Google cache.
and the allowance within this period is 60GB per month. This period and its allowance is available to all residential ADSL
and ADSL2+
customers, except those on bundled ADSL plans or zero quota ADSL2+ plans.
Despite there being a defined limit in the uncounted/off-peak period, Exetel does not actively prevent customers from downloading beyond that limit. While it used to discourage such action by placing users who exceed the limit in any month into separate bandwidth pools for the remainder of the month it, as of 1 February 2008, began applying excess charges to any downloads beyond the off-peak limit.
peer-to-peer
traffic to 50 per cent of its total network capacity during peak periods. Six months later, in May 2007, Exetel reported that the P2P deprioritisation system was a success and announced that it was investigating the implementation of a P2P caching system.
Exetel's assertions that it was not the only ISP using deprioritisation lead to customers of other ISPs claiming that their ISP was also deprioritising P2P. Australian ISP Westnet
eventually admitted that it had been secretly deprioritising P2P for a year.
Since installing the caching system, Exetel has ceased deprioritising P2P.
against another ISP resulted in a third ISP being found guilty of breaching copyright by allowing hosting of illegally acquired content. As a direct result of this Exetel believed it necessary to monitor content stored on servers under its control. On 16 March 2005 it notified its customers that it would begin implementing a policy of deleting certain multimedia files from user webspaces. Customers are able to request exemption from the nightly deletions.
Until the end of February 2010, Exetel's policy regarding the alleged downloading of copyrighted content was to temporarily block a user's access and lead them to a page explaining why they had been blocked. The page provided users with different options as to how to proceed. Following the outcome of the Roadshow Films v iiNet court case, Extel's policy has changed to one of simply emailing relevant customers when a copyright infringement is received.
Exetel donate up to 33% of profits to these projects
Australia
Australia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...
n ISP
Internet service provider
An Internet service provider is a company that provides access to the Internet. Access ISPs directly connect customers to the Internet using copper wires, wireless or fiber-optic connections. Hosting ISPs lease server space for smaller businesses and host other people servers...
which provides ADSL
Asymmetric Digital Subscriber Line
Asymmetric digital subscriber line is a type of digital subscriber line technology, a data communications technology that enables faster data transmission over copper telephone lines than a conventional voiceband modem can provide. It does this by utilizing frequencies that are not used by a voice...
, web hosting
Web hosting service
A web hosting service is a type of Internet hosting service that allows individuals and organizations to make their own website accessible via the World Wide Web. Web hosts are companies that provide space on a server they own or lease for use by their clients as well as providing Internet...
, VoIP
Voice over IP
Voice over Internet Protocol is a family of technologies, methodologies, communication protocols, and transmission techniques for the delivery of voice communications and multimedia sessions over Internet Protocol networks, such as the Internet...
, and other internet services to customers across Australia. Exetel's headquarters are based in offices in North Sydney
North Sydney, New South Wales
North Sydney is a suburb and commercial district on the Lower North Shore of Sydney, in the state of New South Wales, Australia. North Sydney is located 3 kilometres north of the Sydney central business district and is the administrative centre for the local government area of North Sydney...
and its switching centre is in a secure Data Centre facility in the Sydney CBD
Sydney central business district
The Sydney central business district is the main commercial centre of Sydney, New South Wales, Australia. It extends southwards for about 3 kilometres from Sydney Cove, the point of first European settlement. Its north–south axis runs from Circular Quay in the north to Central railway station in...
. Exetel has 110,000+ residential and business customers.
Exetel resells products from NBNCo, Telstra
Telstra
Telstra Corporation Limited is an Australian telecommunications and media company, building and operating telecommunications networks and marketing voice, mobile, internet access and pay television products and services....
, Optus
Optus
SingTel Optus Pty Limited is the second largest telecommunications company in Australia, and is a wholly owned subsidiary of Singapore Telecommunications...
, Verizon Business
Verizon Business
Verizon Business is one of three operating units of Verizon Communications It was created in 2006 when Verizon Communications closed on its merger with MCI, Inc..Verizon Business has over 30,000 employees with 321 offices in 75 countries...
, AAPT
AAPT
AAPT is Australia's third largest land line telecommunications company and is a wholly owned subsidiary of Telecom New Zealand. The company is a member of the Infrastructure Assurance Advisory Group for the Critical Infrastructure Protection branch of the Attorney-General's...
& BigAir
BigAir
BigAir is a telecommunications company in Australia listed on the Australian Stock Exchange .BigAir manages one of the largest metropolitan fixed wireless networks in Australia which provides coverage across the seven major metropolitan areas including Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Gold Coast,...
. Many of the larger Australian ISPs have chosen to deploy their own infrastructure (including wireless) in order to provide faster and less expensive services than Telstra offers. Exetel does not deploy its own infrastructure outside of its own switching centres. Instead, it is a wholesale customer of Tier 1 wholesale telco providers who provide IP Transit, Intercapital Transmission and various Residential and Business Grade Access Network products that Exetel integrate and manage for its customers.
Exetel donates one third of the profit it makes to various, community based, endangered species protection and regeneration programs around Australia. Almost $450,000 was donated in 2009. Details on all of these programs can be found on the website
History
Exetel began operating in the early 1990s as a technology consulting company, providing technical and management consulting services until December 2003. At that time the Exetel administration decided to become a service provider of data and telephone communications services.It began offering ADSL1 services in mid February 2004, SHDSL corporate services in April 2004 and Wireless Broadband through Unwired
Unwired
Unwired Australia Pty Ltd is an Australian company dedicated to fixed wireless telecommunications network offering carrier grade Internet services. They currently provide coverage in Melbourne and Sydney. Unwired has 52,320 customers and 97 employees as of 8 March 2010...
in June 2004. Towards the end of 2004 Exetel added wire line telephony services using the Verizon network and mobile services using the Vodafone
Vodafone
Vodafone Group Plc is a global telecommunications company headquartered in London, United Kingdom. It is the world's largest mobile telecommunications company measured by revenues and the world's second-largest measured by subscribers , with around 341 million proportionate subscribers as of...
network. Exetel activated its own VoIP switches in March 2006 and began offering ADSL2+ services on 20 July 2006.
Exetel now has PoPs
Point of presence
A point of presence is an artificial demarcation point or interface point between communications entities. It may include a meet-me-room.In the US, this term became important during the court-ordered breakup of the Bell Telephone system...
in New South Wales
New South Wales
New South Wales is a state of :Australia, located in the east of the country. It is bordered by Queensland, Victoria and South Australia to the north, south and west respectively. To the east, the state is bordered by the Tasman Sea, which forms part of the Pacific Ocean. New South Wales...
, Victoria
Victoria (Australia)
Victoria is the second most populous state in Australia. Geographically the smallest mainland state, Victoria is bordered by New South Wales, South Australia, and Tasmania on Boundary Islet to the north, west and south respectively....
, Queensland
Queensland
Queensland is a state of Australia, occupying the north-eastern section of the mainland continent. It is bordered by the Northern Territory, South Australia and New South Wales to the west, south-west and south respectively. To the east, Queensland is bordered by the Coral Sea and Pacific Ocean...
, South Australia
South Australia
South Australia is a state of Australia in the southern central part of the country. It covers some of the most arid parts of the continent; with a total land area of , it is the fourth largest of Australia's six states and two territories.South Australia shares borders with all of the mainland...
, Western Australia
Western Australia
Western Australia is a state of Australia, occupying the entire western third of the Australian continent. It is bounded by the Indian Ocean to the north and west, the Great Australian Bight and Indian Ocean to the south, the Northern Territory to the north-east and South Australia to the south-east...
, Tasmania
Tasmania
Tasmania is an Australian island and state. It is south of the continent, separated by Bass Strait. The state includes the island of Tasmania—the 26th largest island in the world—and the surrounding islands. The state has a population of 507,626 , of whom almost half reside in the greater Hobart...
, Australian Capital Territory
Australian Capital Territory
The Australian Capital Territory, often abbreviated ACT, is the capital territory of the Commonwealth of Australia and is the smallest self-governing internal territory...
and Auckland
Auckland
The Auckland metropolitan area , in the North Island of New Zealand, is the largest and most populous urban area in the country with residents, percent of the country's population. Auckland also has the largest Polynesian population of any city in the world...
.
On 18 November 2007 Exetel was included in the Deloitte's Rising Star listings as one of the fastest growing 50 Australian technology companies with a cumulative growth of 159% in that two year period.
Currently Exetel employs 50 people in its North Sydney office, 60 people in its Sri Lanka
Sri Lanka
Sri Lanka, officially the Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka is a country off the southern coast of the Indian subcontinent. Known until 1972 as Ceylon , Sri Lanka is an island surrounded by the Indian Ocean, the Gulf of Mannar and the Palk Strait, and lies in the vicinity of India and the...
n office and its revenue in the 2009-10 financial year was a little over A$
Australian dollar
The Australian dollar is the currency of the Commonwealth of Australia, including Christmas Island, Cocos Islands, and Norfolk Island, as well as the independent Pacific Island states of Kiribati, Nauru and Tuvalu...
55,000,000 compared with revenue of a little over A$49,000,000 in the 2008-09 financial year. Exetel has been profitable in each of its years of operation to date and is on track to meet its profit forecasts for the current financial year.
General
Exetel offers the following internet related services:- ADSLAsymmetric Digital Subscriber LineAsymmetric digital subscriber line is a type of digital subscriber line technology, a data communications technology that enables faster data transmission over copper telephone lines than a conventional voiceband modem can provide. It does this by utilizing frequencies that are not used by a voice...
/ADSL2+ITU G.992.5ITU G.992.5 is an ITU standard, also referred to as ADSL2+ or ADSL2Plus. Commercially it is notable for its maximum theoretical download speed of 24 Mbit/s.-Technical information:... - SHDSL
- Wireless Ethernet
- Mid-Band Ethernet/Ethernet over Copper
- Ethernet over Fibre
- Mobile BroadbandMobile BroadbandMobile broadband is the marketing term for wireless Internet access through a portable modem, mobile phone or other mobile device.-Description:...
- Residential and business web hosting
- VPNVirtual private networkA virtual private network is a network that uses primarily public telecommunication infrastructure, such as the Internet, to provide remote offices or traveling users access to a central organizational network....
- VoIPVoice over IPVoice over Internet Protocol is a family of technologies, methodologies, communication protocols, and transmission techniques for the delivery of voice communications and multimedia sessions over Internet Protocol networks, such as the Internet...
- POTSPlain old telephone servicePlain old telephone service is the voice-grade telephone service that remains the basic form of residential and small business service connection to the telephone network in many parts of the world....
telephony - Mobile Voice Services
Online Gaming Services
The Exetel Gaming Network is a free Online Gaming Network hosted by Exetel.The service is made up of numerous gaming servers, a website, forum, gaming statistics and a ticketing support system as well as an admin team for each game they host. Hosted games are:
- Counter-Strike: SourceCounter-Strike: SourceCounter-Strike: Source is an FPS video game developed by Valve Corporation. It is a complete remake of Counter-Strike using the Source game engine. As in the original, Counter-Strike: Source pits a team of counter-terrorists against a team of terrorists in a series of rounds...
- Team Fortress 2Team Fortress 2Team Fortress 2 is a free-to-play team-based first-person shooter multiplayer video game developed by Valve Corporation. A sequel to the original mod Team Fortress based on the Quake engine, it was first released as part of the video game compilation The Orange Box on October 10, 2007 for Windows...
- Enemy TerritoryWolfenstein: Enemy TerritoryWolfenstein: Enemy Territory is a free and open source multiplayer first-person shooter video game set during World War II...
- UT3 Demo
- Natural Selection
- Call of Duty 4: Modern WarfareCall of Duty 4: Modern WarfareCall of Duty 4: Modern Warfare is a 2007 first-person shooter video game, developed by Infinity Ward and published by Activision for Microsoft Windows, Mac OS X, PlayStation 3, Xbox 360 and Wii. A handheld game was made for the Nintendo DS. The game was released in North America, Australia, and...
- Neverwinter NightsNeverwinter NightsNeverwinter Nights , produced by BioWare and published by Infogrames , is a third-person perspective computer role-playing game that is based on third edition Dungeons & Dragons and Forgotten Realms rules. It was originally to be published by Interplay Entertainment, but the publisher's financial...
Bandwidth management
Exetel has over 10Gbit/s of bandwidth linking its customers to Exetel and over 10Gbit/s+ of bandwidth linking Exetel to national and international internet networks. Multiple 1Gbit connections to PIPE NetworksPIPE Networks
PIPE Networks is an Australian company, based in Brisbane, Queensland, primarily involved in setting up peering exchanges. PIPE itself stands for "Public Internet Peering Exchange"...
is also provided. Since it began operating Exetel has implemented various practices in an attempt in order to manage this bandwidth including the recent implementation of a Google cache.
Uncounted/off-peak period
In Australia ISPs generally offer plans with relatively low download allowances by comparison to the United States and unlimited plans are virtually non-existent. When it began operating Exetel took the unusual step of providing users with significant "free" data in an attempt to manage its bandwidth more effectively. It actively encourages users to carry out their heavy downloads during what is currently called either the "uncounted" or "off-peak" period. Times and allowances during this period have also varied since the policy was first implemented in February 2004. As of 21 July 2009 the off-peak period extends from midnight to midday AESTUTC+10
UTC+10 is an identifier for a time offset from UTC of +10. This time is used in:-As standard time :*Australia **Queensland*Federated States of Micronesia**Chuuk, Yap and surrounding area...
and the allowance within this period is 60GB per month. This period and its allowance is available to all residential ADSL
Asymmetric Digital Subscriber Line
Asymmetric digital subscriber line is a type of digital subscriber line technology, a data communications technology that enables faster data transmission over copper telephone lines than a conventional voiceband modem can provide. It does this by utilizing frequencies that are not used by a voice...
and ADSL2+
ITU G.992.5
ITU G.992.5 is an ITU standard, also referred to as ADSL2+ or ADSL2Plus. Commercially it is notable for its maximum theoretical download speed of 24 Mbit/s.-Technical information:...
customers, except those on bundled ADSL plans or zero quota ADSL2+ plans.
Despite there being a defined limit in the uncounted/off-peak period, Exetel does not actively prevent customers from downloading beyond that limit. While it used to discourage such action by placing users who exceed the limit in any month into separate bandwidth pools for the remainder of the month it, as of 1 February 2008, began applying excess charges to any downloads beyond the off-peak limit.
P2P deprioritisation
In November 2006, Exetel began restrictingTraffic shaping
Traffic shaping is the control of computer network traffic in order to optimize or guarantee performance, improve latency, and/or increase usable bandwidth for some kinds of packets by delaying other kinds of packets that meet certain criteria...
peer-to-peer
Peer-to-peer
Peer-to-peer computing or networking is a distributed application architecture that partitions tasks or workloads among peers. Peers are equally privileged, equipotent participants in the application...
traffic to 50 per cent of its total network capacity during peak periods. Six months later, in May 2007, Exetel reported that the P2P deprioritisation system was a success and announced that it was investigating the implementation of a P2P caching system.
Exetel's assertions that it was not the only ISP using deprioritisation lead to customers of other ISPs claiming that their ISP was also deprioritising P2P. Australian ISP Westnet
Westnet
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.See also Internet in Australia...
eventually admitted that it had been secretly deprioritising P2P for a year.
P2P caching
After several announcements regarding P2P caching, on 28 November 2007, Exetel advised customers that a P2P caching system had been implemented.Since installing the caching system, Exetel has ceased deprioritising P2P.
Copyright issues
In 2005, legal action by MIPIMusic Industry Piracy Investigations
Music Industry Piracy Investigations is an organisation backed by musical industry associations , and record labels in Australia such as Sony BMG and MGM Records for the purposes of enforcing copyright in music in Australia and for providing backing to investigative and preventative measures.The...
against another ISP resulted in a third ISP being found guilty of breaching copyright by allowing hosting of illegally acquired content. As a direct result of this Exetel believed it necessary to monitor content stored on servers under its control. On 16 March 2005 it notified its customers that it would begin implementing a policy of deleting certain multimedia files from user webspaces. Customers are able to request exemption from the nightly deletions.
Until the end of February 2010, Exetel's policy regarding the alleged downloading of copyrighted content was to temporarily block a user's access and lead them to a page explaining why they had been blocked. The page provided users with different options as to how to proceed. Following the outcome of the Roadshow Films v iiNet court case, Extel's policy has changed to one of simply emailing relevant customers when a copyright infringement is received.
Endangered species conservation
Exetel support various endangered species projects, currently: Gouldian finch, Black Cockatoo, Western Ground Parrot, Long-nosed Potaroo, Red-Tailed Phascogale, Regent Honeyeater and Spiny Daisy conservation. They are also funding a Sri Lankan Elephant/Human Conflict Reduction programme.Exetel donate up to 33% of profits to these projects