It seems as though better times are coming to the internet. Telefónica O2 has launched a pilot operation of the “naked” ADSL. If the trial period proves successful, it will be possible to take advantage of high-speed ADSL without the need for a landline payment. O2 wants to offer the service to other operators as part of the company’s wholesale offer.
“A trial operation will take place in ten locations all over the Czech Republic, and its aim will be to test the system for further operation in practice,” said Vlastimil Sršeň, Telefónica O2 spokesman.
The system will be tested in Havířov, Jablonec nad Nisou, Kladno, Mělník, Opava, Prostějov, Říčany, Šumperk, Tábor and Třebíč.
The wholesale offer of the “naked” ADSL is set at CZK 580, CZK 100 more than the ordinary connection to which one needs to add the landline monthly payment. The lowest price for internet connection today is CZK 831.
The final price for the customer can, nevertheless, be higher. The company is reluctant to specify the details since the trial operation and conditions of the real operation can differ from the current one.
There are opportunities
“Saving hundreds of crowns is certainly significant and current ADSL users would surely welcome it. They would have to give up on the traditional landline voice service but in the meantime they could get a VoIP service instead, for zero charge. That is, if they need voice services at all,” wrote Jiří Peterka, telecommunication expert at Lupa.cz. Czech internet providers, and especially Telefónica, are giving up on restrictions that tied down ADSL connections. Operators abolished limits on transferred data last year, and so users can download an unlimited amount of data. Data limits now only exist for the mobile internet connections, which are still under development in the Czech Republic and do not yet reach the speed of the land connection.
The speed of the slowest connections has also been growing, reaching 8 megabits per second, which is 14 times higher than the starting speed in 2007. The operator’s network currently provides internet for more than 608,000 customers.
O2, as the biggest domestic internet provider, is not the first to introduce naked ADSL. It was offered last year by Volný.
Naked ADSL can nonetheless help the company stop the departure of its landline customers. More than 300,000 left O2 in 2007 and their number fell to under 2 million.
O2 will thus also accommodate the Czech Telecommunication Office that warned the company that it might ask O2 to make such an offer.
Competition is getting armed
Cable operators represent the biggest competition to landline internet connection. Those, however, suffer from smaller coverage. Still, UPC, offering internet to more than 280,000 customers, wants to increase its maximum speed from 20 mb/s to 30 mb/s and the start-up speed will grow from 2 to 10 mb/s.
There is still a number of wireless networks offering paid for connection in the Czech Republic. There are more than 7,000 wi-fi networks from all over the country registered at Internetprovsechny.cz.
Translated with permission by the Prague Daily Monitor.
