Internode Pty Ltd is an Australian

Internet service provider An Internet service provider (ISP) is an organization that provides services for accessing, using, or participating in the Internet. ISPs can be organized in various forms, such as commercial, community-owned, non-profit, or otherwise privat ...

(ISP) that provides NBN broadband services, business-class broadband access, web hosting, co-location,

Voice over IP Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP), also called IP telephony, is a method and group of technologies for the delivery of voice communications and multimedia sessions over Internet Protocol (IP) networks, such as the Internet. The terms Internet t ...

, and a variety of related services. Internode became part of

TPG Telecom TPG Telecom Limited, formerly Vodafone Hutchison Australia and renamed following the merger with TPG, is an Australian telecommunications company. It is the second largest telecommunications company listed on the Australian Securities Exchang ...

in July 2020.

History

The company was founded in 1991 by Robyn Taylor and Managing Director

Simon Hackett Simon Walter Hackett is an Australian technology entrepreneur. He is the co-founder (with Robyn Taylor) of Internode Pty Ltd, an Australian national broadband services company. He is a 1986 graduate of the University of Adelaide, holding a b ...

, Internode is based in

Adelaide Adelaide ( ) is the capital city of South Australia, the state's largest city and the fifth-most populous city in Australia. "Adelaide" may refer to either Greater Adelaide (including the Adelaide Hills) or the Adelaide city centre. The dem ...

, South Australia. Internode was the first ISP to offer ADSL2/2+ services in Australia, by installing their own DSLAMs in

Telstra Telstra Group Limited is an Australian telecommunications company that builds and operates telecommunications networks and markets voice, mobile, internet access, pay television and other products and services. It is a member of the S&P/ASX 20 ...

exchanges. This allowed them to offer access speeds of up to 24Mbit/s, significantly higher than the fastest speed then offered by Telstra at the time (1.5Mbit/s). (See also Broadband Internet Access, Australia) Internode also provided a Naked ADSL2+ service, operating on both Agile and Optus hardware. Internode was a part of the Terria consortium which bid to build the

National Broadband Network The National Broadband Network (NBN) is an Australian national wholesale open-access data network. It includes wired and radio communication components rolled out and operated by NBN Co, a Government-owned corporation. Internet service provide ...

Acquisition by iiNet

On 22 December 2011,

Western Australia Western Australia (commonly abbreviated as WA) is a state of Australia occupying the western percent of the land area of Australia excluding external territories. It is bounded by the Indian Ocean to the north and west, the Southern Ocean to th ...

n based

internet service provider An Internet service provider (ISP) is an organization that provides services for accessing, using, or participating in the Internet. ISPs can be organized in various forms, such as commercial, community-owned, non-profit, or otherwise privat ...

iiNet iiNet Limited is an Australian internet service provider that sells NBN plans and services on its ULTRA Broadband Cable, FTTB and VDSL2 networks. It was acquired by TPG Telecom in July 2020. iiNet was acquired by TPG in September 2015 for $ ...

announced the acquisition of Internode in a deal worth $105 million. The two companies continue to manage two separate brands and operate separately. In May 2012, it was announced that

's role would change from being the managing director of Internode to become a non-executive board member for iiNet. At the same time several members of Internode's management team were transferred to management positions within iiNet. In November 2013, it was announced that Simon Hackett would be leaving Internode and the iiNet Group to join the board of the

NBN Co NBN Co Limited, known as simply nbn, is a publicly owned corporation of the Australian Government, tasked to design, build and operate Australia's National Broadband Network as the nation's wholesale broadband provider. The corporation reports ...

which has been tasked by the

Australian Government The Australian Government, also known as the Commonwealth Government, is the national government of Australia, a federal parliamentary constitutional monarchy. Like other Westminster-style systems of government, the Australian Government ...

to provide the next generation of broadband to Australia. In September 2015, iiNet was acquired by

in a $1.65 billion deal. It also provides services for video game company

Valve A valve is a device or natural object that regulates, directs or controls the flow of a fluid (gases, liquids, fluidized solids, or slurries) by opening, closing, or partially obstructing various passageways. Valves are technically fitting ...

Milestones

*Telecommunications backbone in regional Australia: 2001 marked the launch of the Coorong Communications Network, one of the first non-incumbent telecommunications backbones built into a regional area in Australia, offering low cost voice and data services to regional customers. In 2005 a second regional network based on the same technology was deployed in the

Yorke Peninsula The Yorke Peninsula is a peninsula located northwest and west of Adelaide in South Australia, between Spencer Gulf on the west and Gulf St Vincent on the east. The peninsula is separated from Kangaroo Island to the south by Investigator Str ...

region, demonstrating that the underlying model is not only sustainable, but reproducible. (se
Press Release
*Games network: 1 July 2002 saw the launch of the Internode Games Network, a private

gaming Gaming may refer to: Games and sports The act of playing games, as in: * Legalized gambling, playing games of chance for money, often referred to in law as "gaming" * Playing a role-playing game, in which players assume fictional roles * Playin ...

network run by Internode for its ADSL customers. It has since grown into the largest gaming network in Australia (in terms of peak daily player count) ahead of even

's GameArena. *Agile Broadband rollout: In mid-2003, Internode's infrastructure company, Agile, installed its own equipment in the Telstra exchange at

Meningie, South Australia Meningie is a town on the south-east side of Lake Albert in South Australia. It is on the Princes Highway near The Coorong and was surveyed in 1866. At the , the locality of Meningie had a population of 1118 with a median age of 51 while its to ...

. This made it the first exchange in Regional Australia where ADSL was available from a non-Telstra

DSLAM A digital subscriber line access multiplexer (DSLAM, often pronounced ''DEE-slam'') is a network device, often located in telephone exchanges, that connects multiple customer digital subscriber line (DSL) interfaces to a high-speed digital ...

. DSLAM deployment continued, ultimately becoming national in extent. *International Backbone: In early 2005, Agile extended the national private backbone it operates for Internode to connect to the United States. This link was initially provided by leased capacity on the

Southern Cross Cable The Southern Cross Cable is a trans-Pacific network of telecommunications cables commissioned in 2000. The network is operated by the Bermuda-registered company ''Southern Cross Cables Limited''. The network has 28,900 km of submarine an ...

system, expanded in December 2006 to also utilise capacity leased on Australia-Japan Cable to provide an alternative pathway to that provided by Southern Cross Cable. *Unmetered content: Internode also runs content servers such as a cluster of Steam content servers. Further 'unmetered' content available via the national Agile backbone network includes relays of popular streaming audio sources and a 10

terabyte The byte is a unit of digital information that most commonly consists of eight bits. Historically, the byte was the number of bits used to encode a single character of text in a computer and for this reason it is the smallest addressable uni ...

mirror server. includes a file mirror and radio streams *Gaming Network: Internode offers free services to members, recently giving a free advance screening of the blockbuster

V for Vendetta ''V for Vendetta'' is a British graphic novel written by Alan Moore and illustrated by David Lloyd (with additional art by Tony Weare). Initially published between 1982 and 1985 in black and white as an ongoing serial in the British anthol ...

Brisbane Brisbane ( ) is the capital and most populous city of the Australian state of Queensland, and the third-most populous city in Australia and Oceania, with a population of approximately 2.6 million. Brisbane lies at the centre of the South ...

, and

Lucky Number Slevin ''Lucky Number Slevin'' (also known as ''The Wrong Man'' in Australia, ''The 7 Affair'' in Spain, ''Hitman for Hire'' in Mexico and ''Check-Mate'' in Brazil) is a 2006 neo-noir action crime thriller film directed by Paul McGuigan and written by ...

Melbourne Melbourne ( ; Boonwurrung/Woiwurrung: ''Narrm'' or ''Naarm'') is the capital and most populous city of the Australian state of Victoria, and the second-most populous city in both Australia and Oceania. Its name generally refers to a met ...

. These screenings will be discontinued in favour of supporting events, such as the Canberra Games Festival. *SourceForge Mirror: On 3 June 2008, Internode announced the availability of the first full Australian

SourceForge SourceForge is a web service that offers software consumers a centralized online location to control and manage open-source software projects and research business software. It provides source code repository hosting, bug tracking, mirroring ...

mirror. Although the service is publicly available, it is also un-metered for Internode customers. *IPv6: On 18 July 2008, Internode launched a national

IPv6 Internet Protocol version 6 (IPv6) is the most recent version of the Internet Protocol (IP), the communications protocol that provides an identification and location system for computers on networks and routes traffic across the Internet. IPv ...

service, the first in Australia. Internode has supported many local events, such as the

Adelaide Film Festival The Adelaide Film Festival (AFF, formerly ADLFF) is film festival usually held for two weeks in mid-October in cinemas in Adelaide, South Australia. Originally presented biennially in March from 2003, since 2013 AFF has been held in October ...

WOMADelaide WOMADelaide is an annual four-day festival of Music, Arts and Dance, which was first held in 1992 in Botanic Park, Adelaide, South Australia. One of many WOMAD festivals held around the world, it is a four-day event that presents a diverse selec ...

, the

Adelaide Fringe The Adelaide Fringe, formerly Adelaide Fringe Festival, is the world's second-largest annual arts festival (after the Edinburgh Festival Fringe), held in the South Australian capital of Adelaide. Between mid-February and mid-March each year, ...

(for at least 10 years until 2014) and the Global

Green hosting Green hosting or eco-friendly hosting is Internet hosting that involves strategies to reduce the environmental impact of their activities. These may include the increased use of renewable energy, planting trees, plants, and grass around and over ...

Challenge.

Products

VoIP

Internode operates a nationally available

VoIP Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP), also called IP telephony, is a method and group of technologies for the delivery of voice communications and multimedia sessions over Internet Protocol (IP) networks, such as the Internet. The terms Internet t ...

based service called NodePhone which leverages the international Agile backbone network and widespread deployment of

Cisco Cisco Systems, Inc., commonly known as Cisco, is an American-based multinational digital communications technology conglomerate corporation headquartered in San Jose, California. Cisco develops, manufactures, and sells networking hardware, ...

VoIP gateways on that backbone to offer low cost, distance independent telephony services. This telephony service runs over a national private IP network, not over the "best-effort" Internet like many VoIP competitors. As such, it is positioned as a carrier grade, packet based voice service, and is not susceptible to quality problems created by external Internet path failures or congestion. While the original NodePhone did not allow incoming PSTN calls, NodePhone2, released on 23 April 2007, is a full two-way VoIP service.

Wireless hotspots

Internode provides a contiguous wireless hotspot network, formerly known as CityLAN, in

, South Australia. The network is an initiative brought about to provide Internet access throughout Adelaide, and eventually nationally. This high-speed

Wi-Fi Wi-Fi () is a family of wireless network protocols, based on the IEEE 802.11 family of standards, which are commonly used for local area networking of devices and Internet access, allowing nearby digital devices to exchange data by radio wav ...

network is open to the public with coverage at

hotspots Hotspot, Hot Spot or Hot spot may refer to: Places * Hot Spot, Kentucky, a community in the United States Arts, entertainment, and media Fictional entities * Hot Spot (comics), a name for the DC Comics character Isaiah Crockett * Hot Spot (Tr ...

throughout the Adelaide CBD. The ''CityLAN'' network is an existing wireless network in the Adelaide city provided by Internode. It provides wireless access to guests and existing Internode customers and has strong access around North Terrace,

Rundle Street Rundle Street, often referred to as "Rundle Street East" as distinct from Rundle Mall, is a street in the East End of the city centre of Adelaide, the capital of South Australia. It runs from Pulteney Street to East Terrace, where it becom ...

Rundle Mall Rundle Mall is a pedestrian street mall located in Adelaide, South Australia. It was opened as a pedestrian mall in September 1976 by closing the section of Rundle Street between King William Street and Pulteney Street, to vehicular traffic. ...

Grenfell Street Grenfell Street () is a major street in the north-east quarter of the Adelaide city centre, South Australia. The street runs west-east from King William Street to East Terrace. On the other side of King William Street, it continues as Currie S ...

Hutt Street Hutt Street is the easternmost of the five major north–south roads running through the City of Adelaide. It runs from Pirie Street to South Terrace, from where it continues south as Hutt Road. Flanked by leafy side streets with many late 19t ...

, and areas of

North Adelaide North Adelaide is a predominantly residential precinct and suburb of the City of Adelaide in South Australia, situated north of the River Torrens and within the Adelaide Park Lands. History Surveyor-General Colonel William Light of the colo ...

. Access through the Internode Wireless Hotspot network is also provided throughout both the

Adelaide Airport Adelaide Airport , also known as Adelaide International Airport, is the principal airport of Adelaide, South Australia and the fifth-busiest airport in Australia, servicing 8.5 million passengers in the financial year ending 30 June 201 ...

and

Darwin International Airport Darwin International Airport is the busiest airport serving the Northern Territory and the tenth busiest airport in Australia. It is the only airport serving Darwin. The airport is located in Darwin's northern suburbs, from Darwin cit ...

terminals. Guests may only use a limited number of services, while Internode customers that log into the service get all ports opened, allowing, for instance, the use of email clients like Thunderbird or Outlook.

References

External links

*
Agile Communications official WebsiteInternode forum on WhirlpoolInternode listing on Broadband ChoiceInternode Games Network
{{Internet service providers of Australia Telecommunications companies established in 1991 Internet service providers of Australia Companies based in Adelaide VoIP companies of Australia Wi-Fi providers Internet mirror services IiNet acquisitions 1991 establishments in Australia