Westnet was a

Perth Perth () is the list of Australian capital cities, capital city of Western Australia. It is the list of cities in Australia by population, fourth-most-populous city in Australia, with a population of over 2.3 million within Greater Perth . The ...

-based Australian telecommunications company providing broadband

ADSL Asymmetric digital subscriber line (ADSL) is a type of digital subscriber line (DSL) technology, a data communications technology that enables faster data transmission over Copper wire, copper telephone lines than a conventional voiceband modem ...

, broadband

ADSL2+ G.992.5 (also referred to as ADSL2+, G.dmt.bis+, and G.adslplus) is an ITU-T standard for asymmetric digital subscriber line (ADSL) broadband Internet access. The standard has a maximum theoretical downstream sync speed of 24 megabits per secon ...

satellite A satellite or an artificial satellite is an object, typically a spacecraft, placed into orbit around a celestial body. They have a variety of uses, including communication relay, weather forecasting, navigation ( GPS), broadcasting, scient ...

broadband,

dialup Dial-up Internet access is a form of Internet access that uses the facilities of the public switched telephone network (PSTN) to establish a connection to an Internet service provider (ISP) by dialing a telephone number on a conventional telepho ...

Internet, telephony and web-hosting services to homes and businesses across Australia.

History

Founded in the

Western Australia Western Australia (WA) is the westernmost state of Australia. It is bounded by the Indian Ocean to the north and west, the Southern Ocean to the south, the Northern Territory to the north-east, and South Australia to the south-east. Western Aust ...

n city of

Geraldton Geraldton (Wajarri language, Wajarri: ''Jambinu'', Wilunyu language, Wilunyu: ''Jambinbirri'') is a coastal city in the Mid West (Western Australia), Mid West region of Western Australia, north of the state capital, Perth. As of the , Geraldt ...

in 1994 by Chris and Rhonda Thomas, Westnet began in a spare bedroom. In 1996 it was purchased by local company Mitchell and Brown Communications and experienced rapid growth over the years as a local

internet service provider An Internet service provider (ISP) is an organization that provides a myriad of services related to accessing, using, managing, or participating in the Internet. ISPs can be organized in various forms, such as commercial, community-owned, no ...

to the Geraldton region. With this expansion came the necessity of larger premises, which saw Westnet relocate to

St Martins Tower St Martins Tower is a office building in Perth, Western Australia. It was the tallest building in the city from its completion in 1978 for almost 10 years, until it was overtaken in height by the BankWest Tower in 1988. The tower has a revolvi ...

in 1999. Westnet completed the move to new premises in

Central Park Tower Central Park Tower is a residential supertall skyscraper at 225 West 57th Street, along Billionaires' Row, in the Midtown Manhattan neighborhood of New York City, New York, U.S. Designed by Adrian Smith + Gordon Gill Architecture, the build ...

, Perth. The move was in response to continued growth, and requirements for expanded office space for staff and resources. In 2004, Westnet began offering a telephone service in addition to its internet products. At this time, the company began referring to itself as a

telecommunications service provider Telecommunication, often used in its plural form or abbreviated as telecom, is the transmission of information over a distance using electronic means, typically through cables, radio waves, or other communication technologies. These means of ...

, rather than only an internet service provider.

Acquisition by iiNet

On 8 May 2008 Western Australian based internet service provider

iiNet iiNet Limited is an Australian internet service provider and telecommunications company that sells NBN plans, 4G and 5G Home Wireless Internet and services on its ULTRA Broadband Cable, FTTB and VDSL2 networks. iiNet also sells mobile pho ...

acquired Westnet for $81 million. The two companies continue to trade separately, but share many functions. In March 2015 iiNet was bought by TPG in a $1.4 billion deal, effectively making TPG the parent company of Westnet. In December 2023, Westnet announced that it would cease accepting new customers to the Westnet brand, and that all existing residential Westnet customers will be migrated to the iiNet brand.

Bandwidth management

P2P deprioritisation

In June 2007, Westnet stated that it had been "trialling" traffic prioritisation for a year, deprioritising

peer-to-peer Peer-to-peer (P2P) computing or networking is a distributed application architecture that partitions tasks or workloads between peers. Peers are equally privileged, equipotent participants in the network, forming a peer-to-peer network of Node ...

traffic, and would be continuing to do so in future. The announcement was made on the Westnet Blog and on Whirlpool.net.au, to mixed reactions. Some praised Westnet for openly declaring its use of prioritisation, while others (including a Whirlpool News editorial) criticised the company for using it silently for a year, or for doing so at all. Whirlpool News's article also suggested that the admission followed assertions by competing ISP Exetel that it was not the only ISP restricting peer-to-peer traffic.

Awards

Westnet has won the following awards: * 2008 Customer Service Institute of Australia – National Medium Business of the Year * 2008 Customer Service Institute of Australia – Excellence in a Contact Centre (WA) * 16th and 17th

ACNielsen NIQ (also known as NielsenIQ, formerly known as ACNielsen or AC Nielsen) is a global marketing research firm, with worldwide headquarters in Chicago, Illinois, United States. The company has approximately 30,000 employees and operates in more ...

Consult Australian Online Survey * Best ISP – PC Authority Reliability and Service Awards 2007, 2008 Joseph Sapienza, 4 December 2008
"Westnet voted "Best ISP" in Australia and NZ"
Fairfax Digital, Retrieved on 17 August 2009.

References

External links

* {{Internet service providers of Australia Internet service providers of Australia Companies based in Perth, Western Australia Telecommunications companies established in 1994 IiNet acquisitions