iiNet to be scooped up by TPG for $1.4 billion

Competition in the Australian broadband market is about to take another step backwards in favour of consolidation, with TPG announcing it's going to buy iiNet. iiNet has long been a favourite of Australia's Internet users for doing battle with "big content" over its right to take piracy cases all the way to end users. It won …

[dan1980]

Awesome.

[Sorry that handle is already taken.]

Sarcasm?

[dan1980]

Yes.

[MadMat]

Step backwards indeed

The Internet in Australia does appear to be in a phase of degradation at the moment. Quite a few (me included) iiNet customers migrated from TPG due to service and quality issues; now it will be back to square one.

In addition, the current Federal Government has moved the NBN (National Broadband Network) goal-posts mid-rollout so that it is no longer FTTX (Fiber-to-the-premises) but the last couple of Km will remain copper. Seen by many as a step-back - argument being the main bottleneck is that copper - it kinda just adds to the bucket of issues Australia seems to be building to keep it from moving forward with the rest of the world.

Seems the technological future in Australia is getting a little dimmer....

[Ute Man]

bugger

I'm one of the subscribers that left TPG and went to iinet.

The reason I left TPG was that they had absolutely no plans ready for the NBN when they rolled it out in my town. None, not one, zero, nada, zilch. I audibly groaned when I heard iinet was being bought.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: bugger

Ameritard here, wishing you luck.

[Neoc]

So does that mean that us current iiNet customers will now get iiNet service levels at TPG prices (one can hope)? or TPG service levels at iiNet prices (more likely)?

[psyvenrix]

You will assimilate

So the iiBorg finally got bought out by someone else. Not that i have ill will towards iiNet (ex staff member here).

So that leaves three ISPs in australia now - Telstra, Optus and Total Poxface Group (trademark pending). There are others but they are tiny by size. All three care more about profit that customer service. Also TPG's record on copyright notices does not bode well as it is a fight that iiNet damn near shouldered alone in the public eye ( not many people know the first ISP to offer support to iiNet was Telstra - i know this as i worked at iinet when that famous case when to court).

We can only hope some NBN only ISP can fill the now niche void of decent service with decent customer service in the coming future, grim and dark as it now appears to be.

[John Tserkezis]

Arg dang it.

I was going to move to iiNet, but hearing that TPG will be running the show - probably not.

Some time back, a company I worked for was with TPG, and every bloody week without fail their email servers would fall over for a better part of a day.

We were almost on a first name basis with the support staff, well called them that often: "email server is down again", "yes we know".

Later on, I was assured by a colleague that TPG's management had changed hands - but I can't shake that old feeling. I am aware many ISPs nowadays either don't supply email at all, and most don't touch newsgroups anymore, so we're driven to third parties - that's fine, but back in the day, using your ISP's email service was the done thing.

Reading reviews doesn't help. It appears that if you're dealing with insurance, real estate or ISPs, you're not going to get out of it happy.