Buddy Guard Recognised – Finalist Best Broadband Innovation

Bypass Network Services is pleased to announce that their network level parental control solution – the Buddy Guard platform has been recognised as a finalist in the Broadband Compare Awards for Best Broadband Innovation. Bypass is the only Value Added Services Provider nominated in this category; the three others are traditional telecommunications providers.

Somewhat ironically, Bypass is not usually in the business of competing with its customers; it’s our role to help broadband providers stand out and differentiate themselves from their competition. The Best Broadband Innovation category is open to consumer and business Internet Service Providers as well as organisations like Bypass that work within the broadband industry.

Every month 30,000 consumers check Broadband Compare to look at the value their provider offers. Our offers are designed to set our customers broadband connection apart so they stop competing based on speed, price and data.

The uptake of the kid-safe Internet is gaining momentum, yet on the comparison site, customers with children can not see if their provider offers an option to block inappropriate content. We’ve contacted the site to see if we can rectify this.*

The awards are supported by Consumer, a trusted source of independent consumer information. We’re proud to be recognized and wish our fellow entrants all the best for the awards.

Our thanks to Chorus for sponsoring the Broadband Innovation Category.

*Update 28th Sept: Great news, we’ve heard back from Broadband Compare and are pleased to tell you they are creating a kid-safe category on their website soon.

 

Is the Aussie ISP a threatened species under NBN regime?

Andrew Khoo, Solutions Architect at AmaySIM spoke at AusNOG in Melbourne last week and explained that Australian ISPs are experiencing high levels of churn and reduced margins as the NBN is rolled out across Australia. Especially for ISPs outside of the “big 4” who don’t have the capacity to connect directly to all 121 NBN inter-connect points and are forced to buy the NBN service through an intermediary.

This is very similar to the NZ situation as the local government rolls out the UFB (Ultrafast Broadband Network) to around 87% of NZ premises. While the NZ UFB has a much lower barrier to entry for smaller ISPs, there is still enormous pressure on the small and mid-tier NZ ISPs from the large ISPs who offer multifaceted services.

Those multifaceted services include mobile and power being offered by a traditional telco (Slingshot), a Vocus brand and internet service being offered by electricity generators (Trustpower). These are all situations where cross-subsidization could occur between different services giving the large ISP an advantage over the smaller operator.

In both NZ & Australia, the fibre rollout has led to a land grab by ISPs as they take advantage of customer churn, driven by the awareness of new services available over the fibre networks not available on the copper networks such as high-resolution video streaming and multi-subscriber video streaming.

The NZ ISP market leads Australia by several years, so it is simple for Australian ISPs to see their future by looking across the Tasman to their NZ peers. There is still room for ISPs in Australia to bring other services into the mix (such as energy retailing) which will hit ISPs hard who are already struggling due to low margins and no significant point of difference from their competition.

ISPs selling over NBN need to evolve too rapidly to avoid extinction.  The quote that comes to mind is from Korean business theorist, W. Chan Kim who said in his Blue Ocean Strategy book, “The only way to beat the competition is to stop trying to beat the competition.” This is usually interpreted as instead of trying to beat the competition, do something different; precisely what the NZ ISPs who are crossing over into electricity resale are doing.

New Zealand ISPs are differentiating by adding related services to their internet service. Stuff Fibre (a one-year-old fibre ISP) has found good traction offering a parental controls service to their customers. This has immediate appeal to families with school-age children and provides a tangible point of difference from their competitors who talk about benefits such as internet speed and price.

Instead of competing based on price, speed and data they provide the end user with a point of difference that addresses a key concern in every family home with school-age children, how do we manage screen time?  

Talk to any parent in Australia, and you’ll know their kids see their device as an extension of themselves, as digital natives, and use the demands of homework to justify being online 24/7. They’ll tell you their teens stay up too late chatting with their friends, and this causes health concerns and issues with being tired at school.

We accept the Internet has more pro’s than con’s but have you ever thought about how helping your end users deal with a major breakdown will enhance your offer and improve your financial results?

Read More – Value Added Services Enhance ISP Growth

The number of devices in the home has forced telcos to rethink their parental controls strategy

 

When computers first became mass market you only had to protect the PC in the living room. It made sense to use software. Now with the number of devices in the home, network level protection is simpler. It’s a single click activation for multiple devices with no end user upgrades. This is just one reason why network level parental controls have become widely deployed in Europe and Asia Pacific.

Buddy Guard is our white label parental controls platform which is designed for a telco to promote its brand, not resell the brand of a security software company. This positions the network as safe to enhance the telco brand, improve the value bundle and reduce churn.

Built for telco’s, our API’s are designed to use the telco portal to power the customer experience which increases self-service uptake.

As a managed service, unlike a traditional vendor where you buy an appliance or software application, we provide an SLA, monitoring and all upgrades for the parental controls platform.

Telco’s globally are also typically blocking CSA content, we provide this functionality that allows to turn a regulatory cost centre into a profit centre designed to add value to the end user. Find out more about our parental controls managed platform here.