Primus Australia, part of Primus Telecommunications Group, Inc. (NYSE: PTGi), today announced that it has now connected customers in all five of the NBNCo first-release sites across mainland Australia. The five locations include an area of Armidale in NSW, part of the suburb of Brunswick in Melbourne, the communities of Minnamurra and Kiama Downs in NSW; parts of the western suburbs Aitkenvale and Mundingburra in Townsville, and the town of Willunga in South Australia.
All of the Primus customers connected during the trial are receiving services up to 100/40Mbit in speed and generous data allowances so they can experience the full extent of the Primus NBN service before the network becomes fully operational in October this year.
Primus Australia’s NBN mainland participation follows its successful participation in NBN Tasmania’s rollout in Smithton, Scottsdale and Midway point.
Primus Australia General Manager of Marketing and Products Andrew Sims commented: “This is a great milestone for Primus Australia. There has been a lot of work to get to this point, including developing internal processes, connecting to the interim POIs (Points of Interconnect) and ensuring the customer experience is the best in the industry.“
“Our goal is to ensure customers have a seamless transition when they make the switch to a Primus Fibre to the Home service and enjoy the superior customer service we provide from our 100% Australian based call centre.”
Primus Australia’s customers who have been connected as part of trial have shared their thoughts on the service:
Lucas Bediaga in Brunswick Victoria, is a keen gamer and notes that the faster speeds make a big difference to his gaming experience. “The game quality doesn’t deteriorate even when my brothers and I are playing on different computers in the house at the same time,” he says.
Lucas’ mum, Victoria Vincent, has also been impressed with the connection speeds.
“I immediately noticed how much quicker and easier it is to Skype friends in Sydney and family in England. I’ll definitely be keeping in touch with them more regularly,” she says.
John of Kiama Downs says the whole family is taking advantage of the new NBN service.
“We all use the Internet, and immediately noticed the faster speeds when browsing the web, accessing emails, particularly those with large attachments and in the children downloading projects and information for their homework. We’ve also been watching TV online, which is a much better experience without the buffering.”
In Willunga South, South Australia, Nigel Williams was equally impressed with the faster speeds.
"Even when we had two laptops downloading and four people playing games, our Primus NBN service worked perfectly without any dropouts. Downloading the Windows updates was incredibly quick too – a 1GB update was completed before I’d had time to boil the kettle,” he said.