Telstra to face its biggest rival with the launch of the new low cost fast ISP

Outgoing Telstra Chief Executive David Thodey called the Singaporean Internet start-up company MyRepublic the biggest worry of the company, and which stands even ahead of Optus and TPG when it comes to formidable threat to the holding of Telstra in the broadband market of Australia. MyRepublic, which promises to provide superfast internet connection at low prices, has already been launched in New Zealand and Indonesia and is preparing to create its base in Australia as well.

When Thodey was asked about the market competitions at his exit interviews, he said that the company was more worried about the three-tier disrupters that includes MyRepublic than either TPG or Optus, although he has declared parts of the AU$41 million project to be nonsense, prior to its official launch in the country.

Malcolm Rodrigues, cofounder of MyRepublic, told Fairfax Media that the company will be building a local team. Services are expected to be launched by mid-2016 with the aim to take the Australian broadband market by storm. "We've kind of re-engineered the economics of telcos and this is what David Thodey was talking about," he said. "We're going to come in with an unlimited 100 megabit per second offer at the AU$80-AU$90 per month range. We acquire customers at a fraction of the cost of incumbents, we [provide] service [to] those customers at a fraction of the cost and we don't churn."

Optus charges AU$125 per month for broadband services and other similar services, whereas Telstra, with its AU$135 per month rental, offers 100 mbps with 1 Terabyte of data. TPG customers, on the other hand, pay AU$99 per month.

Labor’s NBN roll out, according to Rodrigues, has fallen back in terms of technology, facing major construction problems and delays that led the coalition to look for a change. While NBN depends on slower copper network of Telstra to save time as well as cost, MyRepublic has built its foundation on fibre-only network.

Tech industry analyst Foad Fadaghi said that every ISP, regardless of their network, is required to work with the NBN and the government. Thus, it is not a wise decision to criticise the government and the NBN so out rightly.

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