The nation’s number two telco Optus today said it was on schedule to upgrade the speed of its HFC cable network in Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane to 100Mbps by mid-2010.

The news came as part of the management discussion included with Optus’ financial results for the third quarter of its financial year, ended 31 December 2009.

The speed upgrade — which Optus first flagged on 20 November — will put Optus neck and neck with Telstra’s cable network, which the telco is also in the process of upgrading. It will see Optus’ network upgaded to the DoCSIS 3.0 standard.

In a general sense the speed upgrade will also put Optus’ cable network on par with the speeds of the planned National Broadband Network rollout. However, the NBN will not be available to retail customers for several years.

Optus’ operating revenue grew 4.8 percent in the quarter to $2.3 billion, while revenue from mobile services grew 11 per cent year on year. The company said mobile growth was led by “robust customer acquisitions and increased penetration of smartphones”. Optus is believed to have taken a solid share of the Australian market for Apple iPhones.

The company added 164,000 net post-paid mobile services in the quarter, with total post-paid subscribers growing to 4 million. Total 3G customers increased by 8.7 percent from last quarter to 3.34 million. This included 799,000 wireless broadband customers.

The company’s Business and Wholesale Fixed segments saw declining revenue of 2.9 percent year on year, impacted by what the telco said was “weaker corporate telecom spending and lower wholesale international voice revenue.”

“Optus continues to deliver impressive results in a competitive market with five consecutive quarters of double digit mobile service revenue growth,” said Optus chief executive Paul O’Sullivan in a statement. “The record-breaking increase in new mobile post-paid customers reflects confidence in Optus as a leading provider of mobile and wireless broadband solutions.”

Image credit: Optus

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1. John Ferlito
   Posted 09/02/2010 at 10:50 am | Permalink | Reply

   Was there any comment on what the upstream speeds will be? One of the reasons I moved away from Optus cable years ago was the 128k (later 256k) upstream limitation.

   One of the major benefits of the NBN, is that hopefully we will have 100Mbps down as well as 100Mbps up. It is the upstream bandwidth in my opinion which will be the game changer.

2. Renai LeMay
   Posted 09/02/2010 at 11:35 am | Permalink | Reply

   hey John, no comment as yet, but there is a media briefing with Optus CEO Paul O’Sullivan at 1PM, so I’ll try and get an answer on that.

3. By Delimiter – SingTel: “No decision” on Optus IPO on 09/02/2010 at 2:11 pm

   [...] “I can assure you that if we made a decision to do that, we would make the appropriate announcement,” she told journalists in a teleconference for Optus’ regular quarterly results. [...]

4. Azkay
   Posted 11/02/2010 at 4:58 pm | Permalink | Reply

   Yeah, but by how much will they push up the prices? Will they raise the caps?