'prohibitive' Isdn Slows E-trading
The Age
Tuesday April 28, 1998
THE introduction of low-cost Integrated Services Digital Network (ISDN) services in Australia is the most important microeconomic reform that Australia could take, according to a Melbourne-based software pioneer.
Mike Woodhams, a co-founder of TUSC Computer Systems and currently a marketing director with local communications start-up Traverse Technologies Australia, believes the flat market for ISDN services is a big hurdle for the Federal Government's ambitions for electronic commerce.
Prohibitive pricing of ISDN has resulted in a poor take-up of digital services in Australia. Telstra last week announced an extension of its OnRamp Xpress customer trial which, since December, has drawn 1500 subscribers.
Traverse, which was formed especially as an ISDN hardware and services company, is waiting on the new pricing of the European standards-based ISDN services to agressively market its own products under the NetJet label.
Traverse, with more than 100 years of international technical experience, is poised to ride a wave of ISDN demand should the national carrier decide to follow international trends in offering cheaper digital lines.
Its PCI-based ISDN card was designed for connection to Australia's telecom network, recognising both the older Microlink standard and the new OnRamp system, which uses a different protocol.
Traverse was formed last year after venture partner Greg Smith, who participates in international and Australian standards forums and technical committees for ISDN and other technologies, approached a small Melbourne electronic engineering firm Electronic Design Centre (EDC) about commercialising an ISDN card design.
Smith, a telecommunications engineer and consultant who worked for Fujitsu at a time when ISDN services were first deployed in Australia, chairs the international committee on private ISDN connection standards.
Woodhams said Smith had a unique understanding of the ISDN protocols because of his standards involvement and could interpret ISDN line behavior by looking at the binary data.
Traverse views NetJet as the cornerstone of a new range of communications products. "We hope to go onto a whole new flavor of products from this," Woodhams said.
EDC company members boast a background of consultancy for Australian firms and multinationals such as the former Datacraft, NEC and Hewlett-Packard, as well as United States gate array firms, data communications firms and European electronics companies.
Other partners include manufacturing manager Ralph Pfisterer, an engineer who worked for Hewlett-Packard's test and measurement organisation in Germany before migrating to Australia in the 1970s. He set up his own research company after stints with HP and Siemens in Melbourne and was one of the founding partners of EDC, which began five years ago.
Pfisterer said he was a technical operator who didn't want to get into the management side of technology business.
"We are just a group of technical people, very senior in our respective fields, but we are not that interested in being part of a big company with lots of overheads and bureaucracy," Pfisterer said.
"We have the ability to hire contractors for a special project and swell up to 20 people in a very rapid timeframe. That's something the big companies cannot match. We have an advantage."
Other partners of EDC and Traverse are Guy Ellis, research and development manager, who is a specialist in programmable gate arrays and integrated circuit design, while Brett Hahmel is a printed-circuit board designer and has been the leading CAD designer for EDC projects since it began in 1993.
The partners rarely see each other because their activity is interspersed with contract work for firms mainly in Melbourne.
Ellis, who worked a stint in Germany and Switzerland for the European electronics group Foremark, said Melbourne had a higher concentration of technical and communications development than any other centre in Australia, which gave them the opportunity to do other work while maintaining an eye on the Traverse venture.
"If we were reliant on moving NetJet product for cash flow, Traverse would have fallen over long ago," Smith said.
"There just isn't the market for ISDN just now."
Traverse and EDC operate out of a shopfront lab in Camberwell Road, crammed with testing and measurement equipment and technical journals.
Traverse will look at export opportunities for NetJet after the Australian market improves.
© 1998 The Age
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