Varsity Lakes-based OntheNet marks 25 years as internet service provider on the Gold Coast
This year Gold Coast ISP OntheNet marks 25 years since it first began plugging the Glitter Strip into the worldwide web.
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THIS year Gold Coast ISP OntheNet marks 25 years since it began plugging the Glitter Strip into the worldwide web.
A quarter-of-a-century on from the early days of dial-up, OntheNet now boasts thousands of residential customers and big businesses and organisations from the top end of town, including Mantra Group, South Coast Radiology and Gold Coast City Council.
OntheNet was launched in 1994 by Tak Woo, Paul Pyyvaara from Bond University and Robert Farago and Tony Griffiths from Digital Equipment Corporation.
Mr Woo was working from an office at Bond University as a research scientist at the Distributed Systems Technology Centre, a Commonwealth and industry funded co-operative research centre.
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Mr Woo said the four spotted a gap in the market for a homegrown ISP that delivered dial-up internet to Gold Coast residents using local phone lines rather than Brisbane numbers.
“Twenty-five years ago a local call was a flat rate of 25¢, but if you needed to use the internet you would dial Brisbane and you would be charged by the minute,” he said.
“There was not a local number to dial in to on the Gold Coast unless you were at a university.”
Mr Woo said the four co-founders were initially in offices next to their current base in Varsity Lakes, working off spreadsheets on the floor that detailed different financial scenarios for 100, 200 and 500 customers.
“None of us went to business school. We just mapped out different scenarios about how much we’d have to spend on new modems if we had a certain amount of customers.”
He said it was a great deal of fun but long hours, with the four working from 6am until 11pm. Mr Woo said within their first year he had quit his job as a research scientist when the company reached 1000 customers including executives at many of the Gold Coast’s leading businesses.
The reason was simple: they had a monopoly.
“We were the only game in town. People were dialling to Brisbane and paying a lot of money before we came along.”
He said nine months in a competitor opened up and ended OntheNet’s monopoly.
But it didn’t matter. This was the birth of the internet and business was booming for everyone. OntheNet was buying thousands of phone lines from Telstra just to keep up with demand.
Mr Woo said four years in the company pivoted towards the corporate sector.
The fact was the small Gold Coast ISP could not compete with the big bucks thrown at the sector by the likes of Telstra.
“We knew all the big names (from our residential consumer business) from day one so we moved into the corporate side of the market,” he said.
“The big end of town is how we have made our money from then until now. Consumers don’t pay the bills.”
Those corporate or large government clients gained include Gold Coast City Council, which has been a customer for 20 years, Mantra Group (owned by AccorHotels) and South Coast Radiology.
When broadband (Asymmetric Digital Subscriber Line) arrived in the early 2000s, OntheNet made a substantial investment in its own exchange equipment so it could service customers with higher speeds. Mr Woo said it was the first company to turn on ADSL2+ on the Gold Coast, a move that didn’t pay a dividend for 10 years.
He said the company is constantly approached with offers of a buyout or roll-up.
The founders sold out at the height of the Dotcom bubble and bought it back a short time later.
Mr Woo said it was not something they were likely to try again.
He said for now the focus was on servicing its clients as best they could. A long-term view was not desirable.
“There has been no playbook from day one,” he said.
“The game plan changes every week. I’d be stupid to waste my time thinking about the next 10 years. It’s a different game.”
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