TPG ups offer for iiNet to AU$1.56bn, includes clever cash kicker Australia's TPG Telecom has increased its offer for internet service provider iiNet, leapfrogging a counter-bid by the M2 group to emerge as the preferred buyer. TPG upped its offer by 11 per cent, to about AU$1.56bn or $9.55 a share, payable in cash or TPG stock. Rival suitor M2 Group is offering $9.67 per share, but iiNet's …
This is a disaster for Aussie consumers. All iiNet customers will now be handed over to TPG - a company which would be famous nationwide for cheap and lousy service if only Dodo wasn't even cheaper and even lousier.
TPG promise that they will retain iiNet as an individual "premium" business. Yer right. That's code for "charge these suckers more, give them the exact same lousy service we give all our other suckers".
Australia has basically three sorts of ISP:
1: Major telcos with fair to poor service standards, highly questionable techical competence in some cases (e.g., the Vodafail mobile network, anything that has to do with Big Pond), long lock-in contracts, and very, very high prices. Telstra, Optus, Vodafail, various other-brand fronts for them such as Virgin (which is Optus).
2: Cheap price-price-price vendors with no technical standards worth mentioning, appalling customer service on a good day and none at all on a bad day, and prices that look attractive until you actually try to use the service. (Dodo, TPG, various others.)
3: Serious players in between those two extremes with generally reasonable pricing, and generally decent service. (Internode, iiNet (which now owns Internode), hopefully there are some others but I don't know who they are, if indeed there are any others left.)
Not happy.
Agreed.
I was sad enough when internode was bought by iiNet. There is no way that TPG will maintain the separate infrastructure that is iiNet now. Why would they?
Over time the existing iiNet customers will be shunted over the the already contended TPG network. The whole reason I pay the premium I currently do is I get the same speed 24/7, somehow I don't see that continuing.
The design of the NBN really has destroyed the ISP market.
The NBN presents a challenge for running an RSP with a cheap brand a premium brand: PoI choke point.
At $17.50/Mbps CVC (data) is a significant cost to RSPs. If congestion occurs then packets will be dropped by NBNCo. It isn't possible for the RSP to flag packets as 'premium customer' and 'discount customer', which means high speed / low speed customers and discount / premium customers will be impacted equally. The current Netflix debacle provides ample evidence of this.
Running two connections the PoI reduces the economy of scale benefits.
Abandoning CVC charging will result in faster speeds becoming even more expensive. Currently 38% on fibre are connected at 12Mbps and a further 38% on fibre are connected at 25Mbps. If wholesale prices for faster plans go up then it is likely these percentages would rise.
well I guess this is just the magic of markets and capitalism, being able to buy out companies just because...
iinet have track record doing it themselves, I was a westnet customer who ended up in iinets clutches, and although support was pretty reasonable initially I've watched it slide and my last move was far from reasonable as there seemed to be a lack of information on their part, I got different answers about service availability over 3 calls, and this was for my business account.
I assume tpg will see this kind of customer service decline to continue, but I'd rather see tpg over m2, they are deliberately horrible - my only determination after dealing with them.
problem I have going forward is who to move over to, I guess for now I'll see how it pans out, surely they won't have issues delivering non contended ADSL2 for a while after the buyout...
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