nbn - Enabling Australian businesses to digitally compete locally and globally

In a complex and competitive environment, Australian businesses are achieving differentiation and success, both locally and globally, with the help of the nbn™ broadband access network.

Reliable, flexible and fast network connectivity catalyses business competitiveness for businesses of all sizes. A report, Impact of Internet Speed on E-Applications Adoption by Firms in Luxembourg, concluded, “Large and small firms are equally likely to use e-applications, especially in the presence of high Internet speeds and both broadband and mobile connections."

As the businesses unlock the benefits, their bandwidth requirements continue to grow. Data from Cisco suggests that IP traffic in Asia-Pacific will grow by a CAGR of 32 per cent, driven by rapid increases in the use of video and IP telephony.

Australia’s nbn™ access network is a critical piece of infrastructure investment, with the roll-out having commenced around a decade ago.

Research commissioned by nbn and conducted by AlphaBeta predicts that the nbn™ access network is expected to help drive business opportunities, job creation, and enhanced productivity and boost Australia’s GDP by up to $10.4 billion at the completion of the rollout. By 2021, nbn™ is projected to have contributed to the creation of an additional 148,000 jobs in Australia. It is the business of growth.

What is business nbn™?

Most Australians are familiar with the nbn™ access network as a mass market proposition where end users can acquire residential services through phone and internet providers. But the services and product features which help power business success are quite different. By identifying the needs of businesses, nbn has introduced business nbn™, to offer wholesale solutions designed specifically to support Australian businesses.

Wholesale business nbn™ solutions are designed to provide the reliability, flexibility, and choice that Australian organisations need through a service provider. Features include wholesale committed information rates, symmetrical speeds, enhanced service levels and a dedicated business nbn™ Operations Centre.

Most importantly, the solutions are set up to help businesses to support growth.

business nbn™ solutions are also designed to address a key concern of many businesses – downtime. Five years ago, Gartner put the cost of downtime at $5600/minute. In today’s digitally-transformed world, the impact of an hour’s downtime is likely to be significantly more (and harder to quantify, given how much businesses rely on technology). In response to this need, business nbn™ solutions are supported via a dedicated business nbn™ Operations Centre and a workforce.

As with all plans on the nbn™ access network, companies purchase business nbn™ solutions from approved third party service providers. The technology underpinning business nbn™ is designed to help service providers offer priority data and high levels of reliability in order to meet the needs of business end user customers.

business nbn™ solutions available

Business grade sales and support operations are designed to address business needs and priorities through service providers on business nbn™. To take advantage of these offerings, organisations should look for the powered by business nbn™ logo as a signifier that their service providers will include the product and service features to address both their needs and business priorities.

Service providers who use the logo will offer business grade plans structured on product features that include enhanced Service Level Agreements, data traffic classes and business nbn™ Enterprise Ethernet.

Service providers delivering business nbn™ solutions may offer:

enhanced Service Level Agreements:

Fast, efficient support is vital should there be a network connectivity issue. enhanced Service Level Agreements (eSLAs) for business nbn™ are in place to support service providers’ commitments to businesses. Various levels are available that include options for reduced fault rectification timeframes and support outside of typical business hours.

Learn more about enhanced Service Level Agreements on the nbn™ access network

Committed information rates*:

Unlike the mass market consumer nbn™ services, business nbn™ has the option for wholesale plans to include committed bandwidth beyond the basic 150/150kbps that is standard for a single phone line. Increased committed information rates are helpful for organisations wanting access to the committed bandwidth resources they need. This option provides businesses with confirmation that applications will have service stability -- key to the function of the connected application.

Fact sheet: Business grade data services over the nbn™ access network

Business voice

Additional bandwidth for symmetrical wholesale download and upload speeds that can support voice communication at a higher quality level is available to service providers for businesses who rely on concurrent use of multiple voice lines. An appropriate bandwidth allocation is recommended for heavy use to help:

  • Make voice communication cost-effective.
  • Reduce poor quality experiences or frustrating interruptions
Fact sheet: Business grade voice services over the nbn™ access network

Symmetrical download and upload speeds*:

For many businesses, upload speed is as important as download speed. Businesses are not simply consumers of Internet data, they also constantly push data out over the network based on use of applications such as cloud based services, VPNs, or e-commerce.

Fact sheet: Business grade data services over the nbn™ access network

business nbn™ Enterprise Ethernet

Highlighting the company’s dedication to increased choice and flexibility for business customers, business nbn™ Enterprise Ethernet was launched in October 2018. It was designed to deliver the data performance required for critical business applications.

business nbn™ Enterprise Ethernet is a layer 2 service that offers wholesale symmetrical bandwidth speeds from 10/10 Mbps up to 1,000/1,000 Mbps (1Gbps)* and supported by the business nbn™ Operations Centre. It is available across three classes of service to prioritise traffic for flexibility of application.

business nbn™ Enterprise Ethernet is also built for reliability, it has been designed to be compliant with reliability-focused global standards (Metro Ethernet Forum – MEF CE 2.0) and is supported by a 24/7 team of dedicated service managers. It underscores the ongoing commitment nbn has made to help to provide Australian businesses the tools they need to meet escalating connectivity and data needs, realise digital transformation, and emerge as innovative and highly competitive.

What does business nbn™ mean for Australian businesses?

Australian businesses can expect leading solutions, services, and support, across numerous core areas thanks to a business service offering that focuses on delivering the wholesale infrastructure businesses need to succeed in a complex environment.

Business customer experience commitment:

There are fundamental differences between residences and businesses when it comes to network activation or support. Technology location and the need for coordination between parties for installations or fault rectifications are only two examples of the complexities that are involved in supporting businesses. To address these needs, nbn set up a dedicated operations centre in 2018 to handle business connections and fault fixes. Providing a single point of contact for service providers supporting businesses, the operations centre allows nbn to better address and be more responsive to the needs of business.

The business nbn™ Operations Centre works closely with service providers to improve the experience of business customers on the nbn™ access network. The centre is based in Melbourne and staffed by more than 100 highly experienced, highly-trained, business-grade customer experience operatives.

It is designed to be a dedicated support organisation focused on delivering business-grade connection and assurance experiences. It is the single point for service providers and field teams to contact to resolve issues and support new activations for business customers; it is open 24/7, and offer end-to-end case management for incidents with service providers.

A transition for ISDN and BDSL*:

Many businesses rely on Special Services to run business critical services such as voice lines, emergency lift phones or EFTPOS machines. They are delivered on copper telecommunications products often separate to standard landline phone or internet service. As the nbn™ access network rollout continues, affected Special Services ^ will be switched off. This may significantly impact some Australian businesses and could cause significant disruption across a host of communications technologies they rely on. Special Services affected include ISDN, Ethernet Lite, Frame Relay, Megalink, DDS Fastway, and Customnet ^. In order to minimise disruption, it’s important for companies to begin exploring the options now.

Click here to read about transitioning Special Services to the nbn™ access network

While businesses can replace current services with a like-for-like replacement, taking this opportunity to upgrade can unlock even more potential. Additionally, migrations for special services can be complex, but there are teams in place to help support the transition. Businesses who investigate their Special Services requirements now will be at an advantage when planning and implementing the migration coming up.

business nbn™ accredited advisers

An Information and Communications Technology (ICT) program, which helps enable participating ICT consultants to assist their business clients maximise the results they get from their nbn™ connection, was established in 2018. The business nbn™ ICT Channel Program is also designed to help participating ICT consultants deliver an enhanced customer experience. Accredited ICT consultants may use a business nbn™ accredited adviser logo on their website.

Learn more about the business nbn™ ICT Channel Program

Business benefits in action

Businesses and organisations across many Australian industries are benefitting from reliable, flexible network connections over the nbn™ access network#:

  1. Stockland’s Aura Business Park was looking for a network solution to address the needs of businesses of a variety of sizes and industries. They chose the nbn™ access network and are set to become one of the first business precincts in the country to be business nbn™ Enterprise Ethernet ready, creating an attractive opportunity for all-sized businesses with higher bandwidth needs.
  2. Mayfair Property Management was looking to differentiate itself by providing a higher standard of customer service. To do this it needed fast and efficient cloud-based systems to stay on top of property listings and the associated high quality images. The nbn™ access network allows the business to be truly digitally-driven.
  3. Music producer, Mark Watson, has leveraged the nbn™ access network to give clients scattered across the world rapid updates to very large music (WAV) files that are often needed in a very short space of time for productions that are about to go live.
  4. International manufacturer of electrical switchgear products, Noja Power, has used the nbn™ access network to collaborate in real time with its satellite offices around the world; and to easily and efficiently send 10MB emails to customers in more than 70 countries.

Helping develop Australia

Nowhere in Australia has the digital divide been more keenly felt than in regional areas. The nbn™ access network is helping to bridge that divide by offering regional businesses flexibility and choice. And, in a bid to help ease infrastructure pressure on Australia’s rapidly growing major cities, all levels of Australian government are encouraging businesses to relocate to regional or satellite cities. The NSW government, for example, has announced relocation grants of up to $10,000/worker under the Regional NSW Investment Attraction Package.

The building of the nbn™ access network has been a critical factor in helping initiatives across Australia to stimulate regional economic growth. Digital-ready businesses can operate virtually anywhere, and if they need to access talent that is unavailable locally, they can easily interact with a team of collaborators remotely, no matter where they are in the world ~. However, in order to do so businesses need reliable and robust high-end digital technologies, such as video conferencing and cloud-based technologies, to remotely track and manage accounting, inventory, and other business-critical data ~. And that’s where nbn plays a role.

The nbn™ access network is one of Australia’s most important business infrastructure investments

The Internet has been called the “the highway of the 21st century”. Just as the investment in a national network of roads has facilitated growth by allowing goods and services to travel anywhere in Australia, so too will the Internet – accessible via services over the nbn™ access network – facilitate the growth of the country to become a digitally-led, highly innovative and technologically capable nation.

The reliability, flexibility and choice offered by business nbn™ are vital for Australian businesses. It is the catalyst for bridging the digital divide and can help reduce downtime during critical or peak work periods, while enabling service providers to give enterprises and innovators a high degree of flexibility with regards to the packages and solutions they can adopt.

The bottom line for all Australian businesses is act now. Don’t leave it another week or month because change, on every level, is here. To hear from nbn on how your business may grow into the future and for more information on business nbn™ products and services offered by nbn through your choice of service providers:

DISCLAIMERS:

* Regardless of the retail service you purchase, the actual wholesale speeds delivered by the business nbn™ Enterprise Ethernet product will be less than 1000 Mbps due to equipment and network limitations. An end user’s experience, including the speeds actually achieved over the nbn™ broadband access network, depends on the nbn™ access network technology and configuration over which services are delivered to their premises, whether they are using the internet during the busy period, and some factors outside of nbn’s control (like their equipment quality, software, chosen broadband plan, signal reception, or how their provider designs its network). If your service provider has not selected a bandwidth in the highest of three classes of service available for business nbn™ Enterprise Ethernet, the speeds you experience may be affected by contention on the nbn™ network, particularly in busy periods.

^ Disconnection dates vary and not all Special Services will be disconnected – whether a service will be disconnected, and the timing of disconnection will depend on factors including the type of Special Service, when the nbn™ broadband access network is available, which nbn™ access technology is available and whether Telstra has issued a BAU product exit in respect of a Special Service. To find out if your services will be affected, and applicable disconnection dates, contact your phone or internet service provider.

# nbn is very happy with these organisations’ experience with the nbn™ broadband access network. Of course, end user experiences may vary. Your experience, including the speeds actually achieved over the nbn™ network, depends on the nbn™ access network technology and configuration over which services are delivered to your premises, whether you are using the internet during the busy period, and some factors outside our control (like your equipment quality, software, broadband plans, signal reception and how your service provider designs its network).

~ Your experience, including the speeds actually achieved over the nbn™ network, depends on the nbn™ access network technology and configuration over which services are delivered to your premises, whether you are using the internet during the busy period, and some factors outside our control (like your equipment quality, software, broadband plans, signal reception and how your service provider designs its network). Speeds may be impacted by the number of concurrent users on nbn’s Fixed Wireless network, including during busy periods. Satellite users may experience latency.

Resource centre

  • Enhanced Service Level Agreements (eSLAs) on the nbn™ broadband access network

  • Business grade data services over the nbn™ broadband access network

  • Business grade voice services over the nbn™ access network

  • business nbn™ Operations Centre capabilities

  • Transitioning Special Services

  • nbn™ ICT Channel Program Guide

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