BigAir flaunts new wireless broadband service

BigAir claims its home broadband service is four times as fast and includes more than double the download capacity for the same price as most other AU$29.95 ADSL connections.

BigAir joint managing director, Jason Ashton said the BigAir service is available in many 'broadband black holes' where ADSL and cable services are not -- estimated at around 30 percent of homes across Sydney.

"We are in the unique position of being able to provide Australia's most advanced broadband service to the residential market as we own and operate our own independent network. We offer a minimum of 1 Mbps as our entry-level product as we do not believe that 256 kbps or 512 kbps delivers a 'real' broadband experience. In addition our service is symmetric offering upload speeds at 1 Mbps making it suitable for more demanding applications such as video conferencing. It's about time consumers were given a real broadband option," Ashton said.

The BigAir home broadband starter plan offers speeds of 1 Mbps and includes 500MB of download capacity for AU$29.95 per month. For the same monthly price, Telstra offers speeds of 256 kbps and 200MB download capacity while Optus offers 256 kbps speed and 200MB download capacity for AU$49.95.

Ashton said BigAir is able to offer competitive and flexible broadband services as the company's wireless network completely bypasses the Telstra local loop.

Since launching earlier this year, BigAir has been expanding its network across Sydney, offering wireless broadband services to homes and small and medium sized businesses, along with offering its "enterprise grade" high-capacity services to larger businesses.

BigAir's business-grade services offer speeds up to 10 Mbps and is planning to offer speeds up to 100 Mbps in the near future.