iPrimus is an Australian telecommunications company and wholly owned subsidiary of Vocus Communications. iPrimus primarily focuses on fixed, mobile, and broadband services. Primus Telecom was the first telecommunications carrier to receive a licence when full deregulation and competition was introduced in Australia in 1997 and has network facilities across Australia. Primus operates its own fibre network in the five major capital cities;

Sydney Sydney ( ) is the capital city of the state of New South Wales, and the most populous city in both Australia and Oceania. Located on Australia's east coast, the metropolis surrounds Sydney Harbour and extends about towards the Blue Mounta ...

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 metro ...

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 ...

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 ...

and

Perth Perth is the capital and largest city of the Australian state of Western Australia. It is the fourth most populous city in Australia and Oceania, with a population of 2.1 million (80% of the state) living in Greater Perth in 2020. Perth is ...

History

Market entry (1997–1999)

Primus originally entered the Australian telecommunications market in 1996 by acquiring Australia's fourth largest telecommunications service provider, Axicorp. Primus Telecom was one of the first carriers to be granted a telecommunications licence in 1997. Prior to this Australia's telecommunications industry was operated as a

duopoly A duopoly (from Greek δύο, ''duo'' "two" and πωλεῖν, ''polein'' "to sell") is a type of oligopoly where two firms have dominant or exclusive control over a market. It is the most commonly studied form of oligopoly due to its simplicit ...

between the former Australian Government owned Telecom Australia, later re-branded

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 2 ...

and Optus, before the market was opened to full competition in July 1997. 1998 saw Primus expand their operations further in Australia with the acquisition of Eclipse Telecommunications Pty. Ltd. and Hotkey Internet Services Pty Limited. In 1999 Primus' parent company Primus Telecommunications Inc. purchased the retail operations of Telegroup Inc., a long-distance telephone company based in

Fairfield, Iowa Fairfield is a city in, and the county seat of, Jefferson County, Iowa. It has a population of 9,416 people, according to the 2020 census. The median family income is $46,138, with 10% of families below the poverty line. The city is typical ...

, who was in

Chapter 11 bankruptcy Chapter 11 of the United States Bankruptcy Code ( Title 11 of the United States Code) permits reorganization under the bankruptcy laws of the United States. Such reorganization, known as Chapter 11 bankruptcy, is available to every business, whe ...

. This acquisition included the Australian subsidiary of Telegroup which allowed Primus to improve their capabilities in the Australian market. 1999 was also the year Primus Australia's U.S parent company launched the iPrimus brand to spearhead the organisations strategy of aggressively gaining retail market share by offering 'one-stop' shopping for bundled voice, data, Internet and cellular services.

Primus' growth (2000–2003)

During the period from 2000–2003 Primus achieved some significant growth. They were one of many telco providers to benefit from the collapse of One.Tel by actively pursuing those customers left in a lurch. They used this inertia to grow their customer base to approximately 750,000 retail customers including over 400,000 Internet customers by 2003.

Industry consolidation (2004–2008)

In February 2004, AOL, 7 was purchased by Primus Telecom. This acquisition added approximately 90,000 customers to Primus' existing residential iPrimus customer base. Primus' acquisition would coincide with much industry consolidation as competitor Telstra purchased a 50% stake in mobile provider Hutchison 3G for A$450 million, Kaz Group for A$333 million and Damovo for A$64 million. Meanwhile, competitor Optus purchased Uecomm for A$227 million, a 50.8% stake in Alphawest and A$50 million for remaining 74% of Virgin Mobile Australia . In early 2007 Primus sold PlanetDomain to NetRegistry for over A$8 million. In late 2008, Primus acquired Imagineering Data Centre, a Melbourne-based hosting and colocation provider.

Acquisition of iPrimus (2012–present)

On 16 April 2012, it was announced that Primus Telecom would be purchased by M2 Group in preparation for the National Broadband Network. Primus Telecom was acquired by M2 on 1 June 2012 for $192 million. In 2012 iPrimus in conjunction with

Hungry Jack's Hungry Jack's Pty Ltd. is an Australian fast food franchise of the Burger King Corporation. It is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Competitive Foods Australia, a privately held company owned by Jack Cowin. Hungry Jack's owns and operates or sub- ...

launched a free

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 waves ...

service in 348 stores, as part of a $6 million contract with Hungry Jacks parent company, Competitive Foods Australia.

Residential products

Broadband

iPrimus is one of Australia's largest telecommunications carriers and offers high-speed broadband through

ADSL Asymmetric digital subscriber line (ADSL) is a type of digital subscriber line (DSL) technology, a data communications technology that enables faster data transmission over copper telephone lines than a conventional voiceband modem can provide. ...

and

ADSL2+ G.992.5 (also referred to as ADSL2+, G.dmt.bis+, and G.adslplus) is an ITU-T standard for asymmetric digital subscriber line (ADSL) broadband Internet access. The standard has a maximum theoretical downstream sync speed of 24 megabits per second ...

, as well as NakedDSL and 3G mobile broadband. Primus's DSLAM network is one of the largest in Australia, with more than 66 exchanges.

Fixed line and mobile

The iPrimus mobile network is a virtual network operator and uses the

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 Singaporean telecommunications company Singte ...

network, with 2G and 3G capabilities. Primus Telecom also offers a range of home phone and

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 ...

services.

Other services

iPrimus also offers add-on services including anti-virus and anti-spam filtering, dial-up Internet connection, WebFilter proxy, global roaming and wireless hotspot access. FetchTV is available to iPrimus broadband customers.

Business Products

Internet & Data

iPrimus offers business services including

SHDSL Single-pair high-speed digital subscriber line (SHDSL) is a form of symmetric digital subscriber line (SDSL), a data communications technology for equal transmit and receive (i.e. symmetric) data rate over copper telephone lines, faster than a con ...

FTTH Fiber to the ''x'' (FTTX; also spelled "fibre") or fiber in the loop is a generic term for any broadband network architecture using optical fiber to provide all or part of the local loop used for last mile telecommunications. As fiber optic ...

Mobile Broadband Mobile broadband is the marketing term for Wireless broadband, wireless Internet access via mobile networks. Access to the network can be made through a portable modem, wireless modem, or a Tablet computer, tablet/smartphone (possibly Tetherin ...

, and a variety of internet services including Private IP Networks,

Domain Names A domain name is a string that identifies a realm of administrative autonomy, authority or control within the Internet. Domain names are often used to identify services provided through the Internet, such as websites, email services and more. As ...

Web Hosting A web hosting service is a type of Internet hosting service that hosts websites for clients, i.e. it offers the facilities required for them to create and maintain a site and makes it accessible on the World Wide Web. Companies providing web h ...

Cloud Computing Cloud computing is the on-demand availability of computer system resources, especially data storage ( cloud storage) and computing power, without direct active management by the user. Large clouds often have functions distributed over mul ...

Virtual Hosting Virtual hosting is a method for hosting multiple domain names (with separate handling of each name) on a single server (or pool of servers). This allows one server to share its resources, such as memory and processor cycles, without requiring all ...

, Dedicated Hosting, Co-Location and

Managed Services Managed services is the practice of outsourcing the responsibility for maintaining, and anticipating need for, a range of processes and functions, ostensibly for the purpose of improved operations and reduced budgetary expenditures through the r ...

. Mobility Services by

Primus Telecom Innovate Corp. (formerly known as HC2 Holdings, Inc. and Primus Telecommunications Group, Inc.) is an American public financial services company founded in 1994. History Beginning (1994–1997) Primus commenced operations in 1994 intent on be ...

have recently included Blackberry solutions and dedicated Mobile business plans.

Voice

Primus Telecom services include

PSTN The public switched telephone network (PSTN) provides infrastructure and services for public telecommunication. The PSTN is the aggregate of the world's circuit-switched telephone networks that are operated by national, regional, or local teleph ...

ISDN Integrated Services Digital Network (ISDN) is a set of communication standards for simultaneous digital transmission of voice, video, data, and other network services over the digitalised circuits of the public switched telephone network. Wo ...

, SIP Trunks, Hosted IP Phone Systems, Inbound 1300/1800,

Intelligent network The Intelligent Network (IN) is the standard network architecture specified in the ITU-T Q.1200 series recommendations. It is intended for fixed as well as Global System for Mobile Communications, mobile telecommunication, telecom networks. It al ...

. Primus Accella operates as the Business Voice service for Primus Telecom and is a business grade hosted communications solution.

Awards

Internet censorship

Primus is a participant in the controversial

Internet censorship Internet censorship is the legal control or suppression of what can be accessed, published, or viewed on the Internet. Censorship is most often applied to specific internet domains (such as Wikipedia.org) but exceptionally may extend to all Inte ...

trials.Pilot to assess technical feasibility of ISP filtering

References

{{Internet service providers of Australia Companies based in Melbourne Internet service providers of Australia Mobile phone companies of Australia Telecommunications companies of Australia VoIP companies