Westnet is a

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 ...

-based Australian telecommunications company providing broadband

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. ...

, broadband ADSL2+,

satellite A satellite or artificial satellite is an object intentionally placed into orbit in outer space. Except for passive satellites, most satellites have an electricity generation system for equipment on board, such as solar panels or radioiso ...

broadband,

dialup Dial-up Internet access is a form of Internet access that uses the facilities of the public switched telephone network (PSTN) to establish a connection to an Internet service provider (ISP) by dialing a telephone number on a conventional tele ...

Internet, telephony and web-hosting services to homes and businesses across Australia.

History

Founded in the

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 t ...

n city of Geraldton in 1994 by Chris and Rhonda Thomas, Westnet began in a spare bedroom. In 1996 it was purchased by local company Mitchell and Brown Communications and experienced rapid growth over the years as a local

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 priva ...

to the Geraldton region. With this expansion came the necessity of larger premises, which saw Westnet relocate to St Martins Tower in

in 1999. Westnet completed the move to new premises in Central Park Tower, Perth. The move was in response to continued growth, and requirements for expanded office space for staff and resources. In 2004, Westnet began offering a telephone service in addition to its internet products. At this time, the company began referring to itself as a telecommunications service provider, rather than only an internet service provider.

Acquisition by iiNet

On 8 May 2008 Western Australian based internet service provider iiNet acquired Westnet for $81 million. The two companies continue to trade separately, but share many functions. In March 2015 iiNet was bought by TPG in a $1.4 billion deal, effectively making TPG the parent company of Westnet. Westnet continues to operate as a separate brand with only a handful of products that differ at all from other iiNet or Internode offerings.

Bandwidth management

P2P deprioritisation

In June 2007, Westnet stated that it had been "trialling" traffic prioritisation for a year, deprioritising

peer-to-peer Peer-to-peer (P2P) computing or networking is a distributed application architecture that partitions tasks or workloads between peers. Peers are equally privileged, equipotent participants in the network. They are said to form a peer-to-peer ...

traffic, and would be continuing to do so in future. The announcement was made on the Westnet Blog and on Whirlpool.net.au, to mixed reactions. Some praised Westnet for openly declaring its use of prioritisation, while others (including a Whirlpool News editorial) criticised the company for using it silently for a year, or for doing so at all. Whirlpool News's article also suggested that the admission followed assertions by competing ISP

Exetel Exetel is an Australian ISP which provides ADSL, web hosting, VoIP, and other internet services to customers across Australia. Exetel's headquarters are in offices in Sydney, and its switching centres are distributed in capital city secure dat ...

that it was not the only ISP restricting peer-to-peer traffic.

Awards

Westnet has won the following awards: * 2008 Customer Service Institute of Australia – National Medium Business of the Year * 2008 Customer Service Institute of Australia – Excellence in a Contact Centre (WA) * 16th and 17th ACNielsen Consult Australian Online Survey * Best ISP – PC Authority Reliability and Service Awards 2007, 2008 Joseph Sapienza, 4 December 2008
"Westnet voted "Best ISP" in Australia and NZ"
Fairfax Digital, Retrieved on 17 August 2009.

References

External links

* {{Internet service providers of Australia Internet service providers of Australia Companies based in Perth, Western Australia Telecommunications companies established in 1994 IiNet acquisitions