Welcome to Open Cloud

Why did I start Open Cloud?

I’ve lived a lot of my life in regional areas and I love it. Every time I go back to the city I’m reminded why I enjoy living in places like Bargara. Unfortunately, I’m also reminded of the many benefits that us regional people are missing out on that our city slicker counterparts enjoy and even take for granted.

One of those things they take for granted is reliable internet fit for the digital age. Something that we here in Bargara have only been able to dream of.

When I started my communications business at the beginning of last year, I quickly realized that I wasn’t the only one frustrated with how poor the connectivity had become. Some of the people I spoke to couldn’t even get access to an ADSL connection because of a lack of available ports. Those lucky enough to gain access to a port were rewarded with connections that are almost unusable during peak periods. As a business owner who operates his entire business out of the cloud, my frustration continued to grow. I decided enough is enough.

There must be a better way!

So I started calling the many people I know in the industry to get to the bottom of the problem and try to find a solution for myself, and the community that my family and I call home. By the time I got to the bottom of the problem I realized that nobody was interested in fixing it because the NBN was coming, EVENTUALLY. That made the problem seem even bigger because my business has been helping build the NBN and I know that we can’t rely on it to be our savior when it finally does arrive!

After all my many months of emails, phone calls and travels to Brisbane to try to fix this problem, I concluded that the only way to deliver a service that I would be happy with was to do it myself!

That’s why I started Open Cloud Broadband.

The problem with our internet in Bargara is caused by several factors. The number one reason is capacity. The people who can’t get access to an ADSL port are stuck because there simply isn’t enough capacity in the existing equipment for any extra connections. Telstra is not going to be doing any upgrades because they have sold their network to NBN so they won’t be able to recoup any outlays on the extra equipment.

With all the equipment capacity gone, that means all the upstream channels are also at capacity, which leaves those of us with access to an ADSL port sharing a connection from our local area to the outside world that was designed for a network with usage calculations from ten years ago. With downloads in Australia increasing from 1.7 million TB in the three months leading up to December 2015 to 2.5 million TB in the three months up to December 2016, an increase of 33%, you can begin to see that our current infrastructure just isn’t up to the task. Think about it like a town's water supply. All the available water connections are taken and everybody is using 33% more water. The result would be very poor pressure and then the council would step in and impose water restrictions to ensure everyone gets their fair share. Well, that’s kind of what is happening to us with our internet connections. 

The other major contributing factor to our poor internet speeds is the way our connections are delivered to our house. Our current internet (and our future NBN when it finally arrives), is run on our telephone cables into our house from the local exchange or a kind of mini exchange known as a rim. These are all run on old copper cabling run under the ground in conduits that are constantly full of water and exposed to a lot of the elements. A lot of these cables are over 30 years old and well past any usable state. Have you ever noticed that your internet is terrible after rain events? Well, that’s all the joints in the cables flooding with water.

So how is Open Cloud different?

At Open Cloud Broadband, we’re a wireless internet service provider. That means that our connections travel through the air to your house and not through 30+-year-old copper cabling and joints that are filled with water to deliver you connectivity fit for the digital age. It is almost the same way that mobile phones operate except that we don’t try to cover the large distances mobile providers do. Our technology is also slightly different to theirs meaning our data throughput is much higher and more stable. We also install an antenna on your roof which will ensure we have as close to line of sight as possible to ensure reliability and strong signal strength.

To combat the issues around capacity, we are designing our network with low contention ratios and we will be advertising our maximum contention ratio which is something that no other Telco will ever tell you. This means that you won’t have to share limited bandwidth with loads of other people like you currently do. Major Telcos use large contention ratios to increase their profits to the detriment of end user experience. One of our core values is integrity which is why we will have a maximum contention ratio and advertise it so you know the maximum amount of connections you are sharing with.

On top of that, we will also be offering one to one contention ratios to business connections with priority assistance so that you don’t have to share your bandwidth with anyone. 

How will we make this happen?

I need your help. To bring the community of Bargara the broadband that it deserves, I need the community to help. I have done a lot of work behind the scenes trying to solve this problem and I need to do a lot more to turn this into a reality, but I can’t do this without community support. Bringing Bargara the broadband it deserves means I have to make some pretty big commitments that would make me liable for quite a long time, so to make this viable I need a real commitment from the community. I don’t need people just saying they’re sick of their current provider and wanting change, I need people who are willing to put their money where their mouth is and help make it happen.

To do this I will be starting a Kickstarter campaign where anyone who pledges money will receive a discount of 50% on their installation costs and really commit to the project.

At the end of the day, I might want to solve this problem for the community and for myself, but I also have a wife and 4 children that I need to feed, so I can’t just throw everything I have at this problem without some indication that people will support it.

So please jump on our facebook page and follow us on twitter and snapchat and please don’t forget to sign up to our email list to be kept up to date with our progress. And tell all your neighbors!