The introduction of $29.95 ADSL retail products by Telstra and the massive pricewar that has ensued will stimulate interest in broadband from the small business sector, but most won’t sign up to cheaper barebone plans, an industry representative claims.
Pacific Internet managing director, Dennis Muscat, said although the new price point would help draw the small business sector’s attention to high-speed Internet services, most were too technology savvy to be fooled into signing up for services with entry-level download excess charges.
Cheaper ADSL services would stimulate interest and fuel small businesses to take up broadband, but not at the $29.95 price point, Muscat said. This is despite the fact that 41 per cent of small businesses in Australia are now using broadband plans aimed at the residential market.
According to the results of Pacific Internet’s latest Broadband Barometer January 2004 report only 47 per cent of small businesses surveyed use a broadband product tailored specifically to the business and small business market.
Muscat said there was a plethora of broadband products designed for businesses in the market today. However, the industry was still not doing enough to sell the benefits of business-grade services to the small business sector.
The quarterly broadband report, compiled for Pacific Internet by ACNielsen.consult, is based on a survey of 452 Internet-enabled small businesses (with up to 50 employees) across both metro and regional areas in Australia.
Of those surveyed, 47 per cent are now accessing the Internet via a broadband service.
DSL services proved most popular, with 30 per cent of respondents using some form of DSL as their broadband connection.
For the first time since the report began in June last year, respondents were asked to compare the impact of broadband with narrowband on their business.
In total, 61 per cent of respondents said broadband had “significantly” improved efficiency and productivity of their business, while another 25 per cent said broadband was “extremely significant”.
But the benefits were being lost to regional businesses unable to access broadband services, Muscat said.
Of those businesses surveyed in metro areas, 55 per cent were using broadband, compared to 20 per cent in regional areas. While 34 per cent of regional businesses said they didn’t use broadband because it was too expensive, 37 per cent said they could not access broadband in their area.
The report also found take-up of “value-added” high-speed services, such as Voice over IP (VoIP), videoconferencing and Wi-Fi, remained low across the small business sector.
Just 6 per cent of businesses surveyed were using VoIP, with a total of 17 per cent intending to use VoIP within the next 12 months. Public wireless Internet hotspot access fared slightly better, with 9 per cent of survey respondents claiming to currently use the technology and 15 per cent planning to use it in 12 months time.
Telecommuting, however, had become a popular topic for discussion with small businesses, Muscat said. Of those surveyed, 35 per cent said they used broadband for telecommuting or remote access. Another 10 per cent said they intended to use these services within the next six to 12 months.
In contrast, 17 per cent of businesses surveyed in June 2003 were using their broadband connection for telecommuting or remote access. A further 17 per cent said they planned to introduce these services in the future.
Small business concerns with excess broadband usage and download charges has fallen since the first Barometer report in June 2003. Twenty-six per cent said they had concerns about download usage in the latest report, a 7 epr cent improvement on the 33 per cent in June 2003.
The impact of Telstra’s $29.95 ADSL retail plan featuring 200MB of download usage per month might prove a cause for concern for retail users, but Muscat said he was confident small businesses would read the fine print and sign up to services which matched their download needs.
Volumes of data downloaded by small businesses in the January report remained fairly consistent since the first Barometer report. The majority (22 per cent) use less than 500MB per month (down from 26 per cent in June 2003). The next most popular download usage bracket as w500 to 1000MB per month (21 per cent), followed by 1 to 2GB per month (19 per cent).
While small businesses might not necessarily be swayed to broadband at the lower $29.95 ADSL price point, the new ADSL and cable plans had already stimulated residential demand, Telstra said.
Since the announcement of its new retail prices 10 days ago, the rate of new retail applications had jumped by 85 per cent compared to last month, the telco said.
It has also announced it will drop its wholesale ADSL prices in a bid to appease its wholesale customers and co-operate with the ACCC.
