Welcome

Welcome to the first edition of Wavelength, the newest way to get up to date with what’s happening at Uecomm.

Recently Uecomm commenced customer satisfaction research. And one of things we learned from the research is that our customers wanted to know more about what was happening at Uecomm, including our people, products, strategic direction and what our other customers are doing with our network.

Wavelength has been developed to address this request and to also provide you with some interesting and informative reading.

Interestingly, it’s just over a year since Optus publicly announced their takeover bid for Uecomm, and a lot of exciting things have occurred since then.

In this first edition of Wavelength we bring you up to date with where Uecomm fits into the Optus family, as well as commence introducing you to the Uecomm management team.

In this issue our product focus is Uecomm MetroFibre (dark fibre), and we’ll also share a customer profile with you to illustrate how our customers are utilising this service to optimise the capability of their individual operations.

At Uecomm we value your privacy and understand how much e-mail you get sent, so to receive future editions of Wavelength, you will need to opt in to receive it. Please click on the registration button to follow our very quick registration process. Once you have registered to receive Wavelength we will automatically send you the newsletter every two months.

I hope you enjoy our newsletter and welcome feedback from you on its content or what you would like to see in future editions.

Kind regards

Dean Tognella
CEO, Uecomm

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Uecomm management team - leading the way for growth

In the past twelve months, the face of the Uecomm executive management team has changed only slightly as we moved from being a publicly listed entity to a fully owned subsidiary of Optus. We have welcomed Penny Diamantankiou and Nadine Sercombe to the team and with our increased focus on our people, Grant King who fulfils the HR function, has been promoted to director level.

The executive management team are all leaders in their areas of speciality with strong business, commercial and technical backgrounds.

One of the most recent changes to the team is Brendan Park who has moved into a new position – Director, Strategy. In this role, Brendan is responsible for Uecomm’s strategic direction over the next three to five years.

More than 15 years in the telecommunications industry has provided Brendan with extensive strategic positioning and product-management experience.
He was founder and Director of Park Information and Communication Technologies, where he developed and managed the strategic marketing direction of many Australian companies.

Brendan also held senior marketing roles at Nortel, including the role of Regional Marketing Manager. Brendan was a senior market analyst with Telstra and authored Telstra's data strategy.

Brendan has an MBA from Melbourne University and a Bachelor of Engineering from RMIT.

In his new role, Brendan has recently travelled to Europe and the USA, where he gained first-hand knowledge of the strategies, opportunities and direction leading data carriers around the world are taking.

Nadine Sercombe, who brings more than a decade’s sales and marketing experience in the telecommunications industry to the role, has ably filled the role of Director – Products.

Over the coming months I look forward to sharing more details of the Uecomm management team and new Uecomm innovations with you.

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Dark fibre – the data solution for big business

Businesses are realising the benefits of switching to a dark fibre data network.
Dark fibre networks support all protocols and applications and as customers choose their own equipment to connect to the fibre, they experience end to end control of the speed, bandwidth, type of service, transport protocol and other features.

For example, many dark fibre metropolitan area networks use cost effective Gigabit Ethernet equipment over CWDM, rather than expensive legacy systems. This gives the added advantage that any business can expand its services and number of operations without facing bandwidth constraints.

A dark fibre network is virtually private, a self-managed optical fibre network that is run directly by a customer over dark fibre. Dark fibre networks may be used for private networking, storage area networking or disaster recovery. These networks may be point-to-point, point-to-multipoint, or use self-healing ring or mesh topologies.

Uecomm’s MetroFibre (dark fibre) solution delivers high price-performance benefits for companies which demand optimum capability and wish to operate their own network for security or other commercial reasons. Networks that make use of dark fibre technology take advantage of its core capability of transmitting large amounts of data at unprecedented speeds.

MetroFibre allows companies to control bandwidth, protocols and other important features of their metropolitan networks. You can have your own private optical network, gaining the flexibility, security, privacy, quality of service and reliability needed to manage your own infrastructure for years to come.

MetroFibre also gives you end-to-end control of speed, bandwidth, type of service, transport protocol and other features. You will experience full flexibility and fixed-price access to virtually unlimited capacity, providing you with exclusive use of each fibre strand allocated to your company. And the best thing is additional bandwidth capacity generated by your equipment can be carried over MetroFibre without any price increases.

To find out more please contact Uecomm on 1800 832 666 or visit our website at www.uecomm.com.au.

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Ethernet simplifies Leighton’s network

In 2003/2004 Leighton Contractors, one of Australia's leading construction contractors and infrastructure developers, won a number of tenders in Western Australia related to the Perth to Mandurah railway, part of WA’s $1.4 billion MetroRail project.

Leighton Contractors required a data network to be purpose-built for the MetroRail project as they were establishing a main project office for the three-year term of the contract and three site offices that will be in place for two years.

The company considered a number of options including a traditional wide area data network with narrow band links connecting servers and other equipment at each site.

Lambert van der Heide, IT Project Manager, Leighton Contractors, said that after careful consideration, they chose the Uecomm proposed solution which included the construction of a fibre broadband network to three sites and an integrated Ethernet Access connection at the smallest site.

“This network allowed us to maintain one data centre for the whole project, which reduced IT resource requirements. We didn’t require site-based servers and no additional PABXs were needed as we were able to provide Voice over IP to the offices,” said Mr van der Heide.

Leighton Contractors is using Uecomm Ethernet VLAN – a metropolitan area network consisting of one 200Mbps fibre broadband connection, two 100Mbps fibre connections and one 2Mbps Ethernet over E1 connection.

Over the three-year project term, construction of fibre and the establishment of a centralised site for hardware and equipment proved the most cost effective solution for Leighton’s data requirements.

“The design of our network, which was specifically constructed for the MetroRail project, is simple and efficient. Because we have so much available bandwidth and it’s so reliable, we don’t need local equipment at our three construction site offices. This means that the main project office holds all the equipment including servers and the PABX, and each site simply has a Cisco-powered switch to run the local phones and PC’s. Everything gets carried back to the main project office in native Ethernet, simplifying network management and reducing our costs.”

Uecomm director of products and marketing, Brendan Park said, “What makes this network significant is that Leighton is running a truly Virtual Local Area Network or VLAN across four diverse geographical locations in metropolitan Perth. It’s significant, and a great model, because they don’t have to replicate equipment at each of the sites.

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Uecomm - part of your whole of business solution

Uecomm, as a wholly owned Optus subsidiary, is in the position to provide a complete telecommunications solution to business, government and wholesale organisations in Australia including storage area networking, system integration packages and IP Telephony solutions.

As you may be aware last year Alinta Limited finalised an offer by SingTel Optus Pty Ltd Limited (Optus) to takeover its majority shareholding in Uecomm. Consequently Optus, the second largest integrated communications company in Australia, holds a 100 per cent stake in Uecomm.

At the time of the acquisition, Optus formally announced it would retain Uecomm as a stand-alone channel to focus on the business market and government organisations.

“The reality one year down the track is that Uecomm continues to focus on its core business providing specialist high-speed fibre services whilst augmenting Optus’ offerings to corporate clients,” said Uecomm CEO, Dean Tognella.

Customers of both Uecomm and Optus are already seeing benefits from the acquisition. “Uecomm saw opportunity to deliver an improved range of services to our customers at competitive prices. As an example our customers can achieve a fully carrier redundant network from a single supplier in the instance where both Uecomm and Optus provide services into the same buildings. This is one of many solutions Uecomm and Optus have identified and delivered,” said Mr Tognella.

“By combining in-demand products with strategically located network infrastructure, Uecomm is able to offer customers value for money and leading edge technology,” explained Mr Tognella. “This is a powerful combination and a pre-requisite for Uecomm’s future growth.”

Uecomm’s network footprint in Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane and the Gold Coast, its provision of high bandwidth data services, its focus on Ethernet technology and its emphasis on serving the corporate mid-market have also proven to strengthen Optus’ offerings to corporate customers.

“Uecomm is well placed as a proven provider of high-speed data services, our products are in demand and our networks are located in the centres of strongest growth,” concluded Mr Tognella.

Uecomm was the first company in Australia to offer managed Gigabit Ethernet Metropolitan Area Networks and managed DWDM solutions. And its network is among the most advanced fibre optic networks in the world.

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