BigAir Makes Smart Home Acquisition

Written by Adam Gosling

Wednesday, 05 July 2006

All cashed up and IPO'd, wireless broadband company BigAir has bought into the smart home market with the acquisition of W Home Communications. W Home, a subsidiary of E-Pay (which was once SkyNetGlobal) adds 1,000 new customers and around $500,000 in annualised revenues to BigAir's wireless broadband network. Popular in the multi-unit dwellings market, W Home installs high-speed ADSL connections into a concentrator at each block of units and then distributes access throughout the building using VDSL and Ethernet. So along with the new customers, BigAir acquires all the access agreements, which provide perpetual rights to deploy infrastructure in almost 100 unit buildings. To date W Home has been activated in only 37 of these, so there is significant potential for growth just in the existing agreements. Those 37 buildings incorporate approximately 8,000 apartments across Sydney and Melbourne. BigAir also acquires the infrastructure used by W Home to service the customers in each building. BigAir intends to expand the existing W Home broadband offering to include Voice over IP and Video on Demand services. "The W Home 'smart' building business model is an excellent fit with our independent high speed wireless broadband network.  The existing W Home buildings are mostly serviced using slower ADSL and SDSL for the 'last mile' network connection into each MDU," said BigAir CEO, Jason Ashton. "BigAir intends to replace these slower last mile connections with its own high speed symmetric fixed wireless connection, thus eliminating reliance on other carriers and also greatly improving the operating margins," he said. "The combination of our high speed wireless network connection to each MDU (Multi-Dwelling Unit), with the VDSL and Ethernet distribution within the MDU, provides a low cost high speed platform which will support 'triple-play' services," said Ashton. "We will be able to deliver some of the fastest residential broadband speeds available, and we can completely bypass Telstra and its legacy copper network," he said. "Many of the tenants in these MDUs are professionals with higher than average incomes and requirements for high speed reliable broadband services.  These users are also interested in advanced internet services such as Voice over IP (VOIP) and Video on Demand (VOD). We expect to grow our customer penetration strongly in these W Home buildings (from existing average of 12%) as we upgrade the infrastructure and expand the range of services offered," said Ashton. Related news items Telstra Wireless Hits Speed Record -24/09/2007 Vodafone HSDPA Stretches To Brisbane -05/07/2007 New ToughBook Hitting The Streets -25/02/2007 China Heading Straight For 4G? -29/01/2007 Symbol Builds A Bridge Between RFID and WLAN -07/12/2006 Newer news items The Wireless Loop Spectrum Nobody Wants -02/08/2006 Unwired Trims Wireless Broadband Plans -31/07/2006 BigAir Turns 10 (thousand) Ahead Of Schedule -30/07/2006 Better Unwired Coverage In Melbourne -19/07/2006 Broadcom Ships Over 1 Million Draft N Chips -17/07/2006 Older news items Airwaves Get Faster With Linksys Draft-N -03/07/2006 Longcheer Signs Qualcomm Licence For 3G Data Card -21/06/2006 WiMAX Demo Sends Strong Signal -21/06/2006 Cebit: A Wireless World -08/05/2006 Wagga To Get WiMax Trial -04/04/2006 Tag This Now: