Video: 10 Minute IT Jams – Meet Aussie Broadband's CTO
Aussie Broadband has come a long way since its humble beginnings in a lounge room in regional Victoria. Today, the company employs nearly 500 people, providing internet, mobile, and a suite of other telecommunications services to homes and businesses across Australia.
Speaking to IG Jams, Aussie Broadband's Chief Technology Officer, Jon Risinger, recounted the company's unconventional origin story. "We started as two companies," he explained. "We had Wideband Networks here in Gippsland, and there was also another company, List Broadband, that we worked well with in Warrnambool. It worked great at the time because we were both regional, both in our own areas."
The inspiration to found the company, according to Risinger, came from a shared observation of inadequate broadband services in regional and rural areas. "Being both regional people, we identified that there was a lack of broadband at farms and rural areas… Their networks, just for reference, the fastest speed at the time was 1.5 megabits, which was a lot more than the 56 kilobits you got on the modem at the time, but compared to the thousand megabits you get these days, you can see how far the industry's come," he said.
Rather than remain rivals, the two businesses decided to merge. "After a few years we started offering similar things, both of us, and that was going to be conflicting with each other… so rather than compete, we decided to join together," Risinger said. The resulting company adopted a proactive approach, becoming a wholesale provider and rolling out their own infrastructure.
However, success brought new challenges. "We started having some speed issues because more customers were coming on than that panel, so we decided to do our own thing… we took a bit of a brand known, bandwidth, out to all of the endpoints around the state," Risinger added. The company's infrastructure grew rapidly from there, with new offerings like high speed plans adding to its appeal.
The evolution from a single worker to a significant employer has been a source of pride. "We started with a single employee and now we're up closer to 500 employees, and it really is about the people, about the staff that we have. It's like a family here… Without the people we've got, we wouldn't be here today," Risinger said.
Aussie Broadband is now embarking on a new fibre build project, aiming to further upgrade its network infrastructure. "We're rolling out our own fibre in the ground around our various different states in Australia, and also out to a large number of the NBN endpoints. The way we've been bringing bandwidth out so far is that we take wavelength services from the providers, and because of the nature of the industry those can often take up to six to nine months to provision, so we've got to plan ahead," Risinger explained.
With its own fibre, the company hopes to speed up new connections and innovation. "When we've got our own fibre running out to the point, that'll be a lot quicker because we can run as we need it and also allows us to run a bunch of innovative new products over it," he said, highlighting the first phase targeting businesses keen for ultra-fast, reliable connectivity.
Reliability is a key selling point, with Aussie Broadband earning a reputation for transparent communication around service outages. Asked about the causes behind these disruptions, Risinger cited rodents, errant digging and even ships as the most frequent culprits. "Rats seem to very much enjoy chewing on [cables]; post hole diggers and backhoes go through them more than you'd think; for the cables under the sea, boats and their anchors are a bit of a problem," he said.
But there are preventative measures. "For rats, you can wrap the fibre cable in a fibreglass which they can't chew through. For digging holes, we have the Dial Before You Dig service where you can call up and say 'I'm digging a hole over here', and they'll tell you what's in that location so you can work out where to dig safely… for the cables in the ocean, they'll often bury them in the sea floor," he explained.
Redundancy is also built into the network. "We have optic fibre connections between different states and we'll have two of them running in different paths, tens or hundreds of kilometres apart from each other… quite often there'll be a fibre cut on one of those links, but you won't even notice. It'll just switch to the other link."
These network improvements are mirrored internationally. Aussie Broadband connects to other providers overseas via undersea cables to Singapore and the United States, giving greater control over traffic routes. "One of the main reasons we've done that is force and control. In the past we used local providers to connect internationally, and at that point we're basically relying on them to send the traffic where it needs to go… and while it happens most of the time, it doesn't always happen," Risinger said.
The result is better latency, particularly for gamers who need the lowest 'ping' times possible. "This allows us to actually send international traffic in a more direct fashion… rather than potentially going via Japan and then over the US, or doing a world trip to get to certain locations," said Risinger.
Of course, submarine cables come with their own risks. "Quite often, when they break, it can take up to a month until they're repaired because you've got to get a ship out there, haul the cable up from the sea floor and repair it," he said.
Reflecting on broader changes across two decades in telecommunications, Risinger described the rollout of the National Broadband Network (NBN) as the single biggest technological shift. "It's a massive project. It's given high-speed broadband to practically all of Australia and it's allowed us to offer services nationwide. I think it's really changed the game in terms of how people get access to the internet in Australia," he said.
Asked about the future for the business and industry, his response was unambiguous: "Without the people we've got, we wouldn't be here today," Risinger said.
