Optus
Singtel Optus Pty Limited (commonly referred to as Optus) is an Australian telecommunications company headquartered in Macquarie Park, New South Wales, Australia. It is a wholly owned subsidiary of Singtel. Optus is the second-largest wireless carrier in Australia, with 10.5 million subscribers as of 2019. The company trades under the Optus brand, while maintaining several wholly owned subsidiaries, such as Uecomm in the network services market and Alphawest in the ICT services sector. To provide services, Optus mostly owns and operates its own network infrastructure, It provides services both directly to end users and also acts as a  wholesaler to other service providers such as Exetel and Amaysim. Through its Optus 'Yes' brand, it provides broadband, and wireless internet services. Other wholesale services include Satellite and 4G Mobile. The company was originally known as Optus Communications Pty Limited. It went through the names Cable & Wireless Optus Pty Limited, Cable & Wireless Optus Limited and SingTel Optus Limited before changing to its present name. Optus is divided into four major business - Mobile; Business; Wholesale; and Consumer & Multimedia. History. AUSSAT and deregulation. Optus can trace its beginnings back to the formation of the Government-owned AUSSAT Pty Limited in 1981 . In 1982, Aussat selected the Hughes 376 for their initial satellites, with the first, AUSSAT A1, launched in August 1985. AUSSAT satellites were used for both military and civilian satellite communications, and delivering television services to remote outback communities. With Aussat operating at a loss and with moves to deregulate telecommunications in Australia, the government decided to sell Aussat, coupled with a telecommunications licence. The licence was sold to Optus Communications – a consortium including: The new telecommunications company was designed to provide competition to then government owned telecommunications company "Telecom Australia", now known as Telstra. Early history. Optus gained the  second general carrier licence in January 1991. After privatisation, AUSSAT became Optus and its first offering to the general public was to offer long-distance calls at cheaper rates than that of its competitor Telstra. The long-distance calling rates on offer were initially available by consumers dialing "1" before the area code and phone number. Following this, a ballot process was conducted by then regulator AUSTEL, with customers choosing their default long-distance carrier. Customers who made no choice or refused to respond to the mailout campaign automatically remained as a Telstra long-distance customer. Customers who remained with  Telstra could dial the override code of "1456" before the area code and phone number to manually select Optus as the carrier for that single call. Since 1 July 1998, consumers have the choice of preselecting their preferred long-distance carrier or dialling the override code before dialling a telephone number. The group began by building an interstate fibre optic cable and a series of exchanges between Optus' interstate network and Telstra's local network. It also laid fibre optics into major office buildings and industrial areas, and focused on high bandwidth local, (interstate) long distance, and interstate calls for  business. In its early years, Optus was only able to offer local and long-distance calls to residential customers through Telstra's local phone network. Telstra would carry residential to residential calls to Optus' exchanges, and then the calls would be switched to Optus' long-distance fibre optic network. Optus was the main sponsor of the 1997 ARL season. Corporate affairs. Chief Executive Officer. Kelly Bayer Rosmarin commenced as CEO of Optus and Consumer Australia on 1 April 2020. A respected senior executive, Kelly joined Optus as Deputy CEO on 1 March 2019 following a variety of executive roles including  Group Executive, Institutional Banking and Markets at the Commonwealth Bank of Australia. The hybrid fibre-coax rollout. These practices meant that Optus was the largest customer of Telstra. To become competitive Optus would need to lay its own local phone network. To provide a killer application for this, the Australian Federal government sold subscription television licences. Optus, as well as the Seven Network, businessman Kerry Stokes and American cable company Cablevision, formed the Optus Vision consortium. News Corporation and Telstra created the rival Foxtel consortium. Telstra's local phone network did not have the capability to deliver Foxtel pay television  to consumers in the early 1990s, so Telstra identified a need to create a broadband network to support this new product. As Telstra and Optus could not agree on terms for a joint broadband cable roll out, they laid two competing cable networks, in addition to Telstra's existing copper network, at a combined cost estimated of over A$6bn. Whilst Telstra focused on creating a broadband network specifically for broadcast, Optus designed their cable network to provide telephony services in addition to broadcast television. Optus is no longer a customer of Telstra's after deciding to move the funding  used to lease Telstra's copper network into constructing their hybrid fibre-coaxial network, the first in Australia. Takeovers. Cable and Wireless with 24.5% stakeholder bought out Bell South's equal 24.5% shareholding in July 1997. The company returned to profitability in 1998 and changed its name to Cable and Wireless Optus Pty Limited. Government relaxation of foreign ownership restrictions paved the way for the company to be floated - with Cable and Wireless increasing its holding to 52.5%) - and listed on the Australian Stock Exchange on 17 November 1998. During 2001, Singtel launched a takeover bid for Cable and Wireless  Optus which was ultimately successful and the company became known as Singtel Optus Pty Limited. In May 2004, Optus announced a $226.8 million bid for UEComm. The takeover was approved in July and completed in August. In July 2005, Optus announced it would acquire Alphawest Ltd. for A$25.9 million. The buyout was completed in November 2005 and Alphawest is now an operating division of Optus Business. On 12 January 2006, Optus acquired the remaining 74.15% of Virgin Mobile Australia for U$22.6 m, giving it 100% ownership. OptusNet. Optus Communications offered its first business-focused internet products in 1998  under the OptusNet product family, offering in-house developed dial-up and high-speed services. Optus purchased one of Australia's pioneer ISPs, Microplex, in 1998 to provide consumer dial-up internet services. Separate to this, under the Optus Vision brand, a cable broadband arm began as a joint venture with U.S. cable and content provider Excite@Home and was known as Optus@Home from its introduction in 1999 until it was renamed in 2002. ADSL services were offered from February 2004. ADSL2+ services were provided from December 2005. OPEL Networks. In June 2007, joint venture subsidiary OPEL Networks was awarded  government funding towards the cost of building a regional broadband network. Optus was to be contracted to build the network on behalf of OPEL. In April 2008, after a change of the Federal Government from the Liberal Party of Australia coalition to the Australian Labor Party, the new government terminated the funding agreement and the project was halted, with its functions to be replaced by the National Broadband Network. Terria. Optus is part of a consortium – now known as Terria – that in July 2006 announced their intention to make a combined bid to build the proposed National Broadband Network. Products  and services. Optus's Customer Solutions and Services (CS&S) organisation is responsible for providing support to Optus Business customers. CS&S works with Optus' subsidiary Alphawest to support information technology services across Optus' large business, corporate and government client base. Retail services are sold to customers via phone, internet or through retail outlets, especially franchise chains such as Optus World, Network Communications, Strathfield, Telechoice, and Allphones. Key Optus products and services include: Subsidiaries. A number of notable wholly owned subsidiaries operate as part of the Singtel Optus group. These are: Until 20 January 2013, Optus sold mobile services under the brand  name Boost Mobile. Optus also has a 50% stake in the now defunct OPEL Networks. Other wholly owned subsidiaries of note no longer have a significant active role as individual entities. These are as follows: Reef Networks was formed in 1999 to provide an optical fibre link between Brisbane and Cairns in Queensland. Optus gained exclusive access to this link in 2001, ahead of acquiring the organisation in 2005. XYZed was established by Optus in 2000 to provide wholesale business-grade DSL services under an individual brand, but today provides a collection of products only as part of the Optus  Wholesale & Satellite division. XYZed established a network of DSLAMs inside Telstra telephone exchanges, utilising Unconditioned Local Loop services to reach end users. Infrastructure. Optus' fully owned network infrastructure consists of the following: Customer access network. OptusNet is one of only five ISPs in Australia to provide Cable internet (the other four are BigPond, Neighbourhood Cable, TransACT and e-wire). In August 2010, OptusNet released an upgrade of its HFC network to the DOCSIS 3.0 standard, which enabled customers to access a maximum theoretical downstream bandwidth of 100 Megabits. OptusNet is also one of the few ISPs in Australia to currently  provide ADSL2+ via its own DSLAMs, which it also resells to other ISPs. Mobile network. Mobile network equipment is from Nortel, Nokia and Huawei and antennas are sourced from Andrews, RFS, Argus and Kathrein. The Optus network operates on the following bandwidth frequencies across Australia: The 2G GSM 900/1800 MHz network was terminated on 3 April 2017 in Western Australia and Northern Territory. 2G GSM was completely terminated on 1 August 2017 when 2G was disconnected in Victoria, New South Wales, Australian Capital Territory, Queensland, Tasmania and South Australia. A device that is capable of running  3G at 900 MHz is now required after 2G was completely disconnected to remain connected across Australia. Partly owned infrastructure. Part-owned network infrastructure includes: Advertising and sponsorship. In 2016, Optus signed a 10-year partnership agreement with the Australian Olympic Committee to be the official partner of the Australian Olympic Team and the Australian Paralympic Team until 2026. In 2017, Optus won naming rights to Perth Stadium where it would be known as Optus Stadium. Optus and the Government of Western Australia agreed to a 10-year naming right worth approximately A$50 million. Optus also has  a long-term partnership with the Adelaide Crows in the AFL. Optus has been a partner of the Collingwood Magpies in the AFL Women's since 2018. Optus is the current major sponsor for the No. 25 Walkinshaw Andretti United Holden ZB Commodore driven by Chaz Mostert Outsourcing. Since 2005, Optus has outsourced some customer service functions to Concentrix and 247.ai, with the outsourcer providing 800 staff operating offshore in India, supplementing Optus' 3,000-plus onshore call centre staff. Some functions have also been supplemented in the Philippines. Optus also uses 24/7 Inc. for telephone & chat based offshore support. In  October 2006, Optus announced that it would outsource 100 contracting jobs to another Singtel subsidiary, IT company NCS, in Singapore.