Video: 10 Minute IT Jams – Who is Aussie Broadband?

Fuzzy Broadband, a regional telecoms provider in Victoria, says it is revolutionising the way internet and other connectivity services are delivered to Australian businesses and consumers. The company's general manager of sales, Aaron O'Keeffe, spoke candidly in an interview about key products, a spate of recent innovations, and the company's breakneck growth.

"We've got NBN applied in faster and quicker than other providers - that's our wheelhouse," O'Keeffe explained, referring to the company's reputation for rapid national broadband network installations. "We can provide all NBN services, from TC-1, TC-2, TC-4 and the enterprise infinite product, all throughout our carbon portal and through quota units."

The range doesn't stop at internet connectivity. "Secondly, we provide our supporting services such as hosted phone systems, SIP trunk products - they're the main products," said O'Keeffe.

Fuzzy Broadband, based in regional Victoria, targets both local businesses and residential customers. The company, whose name has become increasingly familiar in the sector, has recently made headlines for its suite of new product launches and platform upgrades.

O'Keeffe pointed to three key recent announcements. First among them: a high-speed NBN offering rolling out to homes and businesses with turnarounds that have exceeded uptake expectations. "Our high speed NBN plans, so up to the gigabit for business cases or 400 down, and for residences up to 1000 down, have been far more popular than we predicted, which was fun to watch as the sales numbers came through," he said.

But infrastructure isn't everything. The real operational leap, according to O'Keeffe, comes from Fuzzy Broadband's customer management tool, the Carbon Portal, launched following months of in-house development and design. "The Carbon Portal is designed to make life easy for our customers and our partners, ordering services and in particular managing your services," he said.

Unlike other providers, where customers are at the mercy of slow manual processes, O'Keeffe said Fuzzy Broadband's portal puts customers and partners in the driver's seat. "Lots of providers out there make it relatively easy to order a service - sometimes - but actually, managing the service post-order and seeing where things are up to from a provisioning perspective, or changing the service, can be complicated and slow. Our web services orchestration makes things happen instantly rather than waiting weeks or months," he said.

The Carbon Portal has already attracted significant interest. "We've just added our 100th partner to the platform," O'Keeffe announced. Although the team fell just shy of the century mark in the first month post-launch, with 98 partnerships clinched, momentum has only grown since. "Yeah, it's been very successful so far, and it's only getting busier and bigger as we go," he said.

So what's driving this popularity? O'Keeffe believes it comes down to doing things differently from industry norms. "We're making life easy, especially for the partners and MSP-type companies out there, making it just simple to order the service, no waiting around. And it goes for all NBN products, not just the TC-4 product, but also TC-1 and their Enterprise Ethernet product," he said.

One persistent challenge for businesses seeking telco services remains the time it takes to get up and running. O'Keeffe did not mince words about friction points in the sector. "One of the biggest is the timeframes involved - just getting services qualified, waiting for quotes to come back, all those sorts of things," he said. "The way it's done has been complicated, where account managers need to be involved for business customers, with quotes scattered between departments. Carbon solves that - you can do it yourself online, in real time, and get the same information you'd get if you called us."

The portal sets a new bar in price transparency as well, O'Keeffe asserted. "Our pricing is very standardised across the board, no matter what channel you come in from - whether it be via the Carbon Portal, call centre, or via a partner manager - you're going to get exactly the same information, which is often a problem for customers who were getting very varied information from different departments."

To support its business customer growth, Fuzzy Broadband has recently launched a new business support centre in Melbourne. O'Keeffe described how this streamlined approach improves service. "We already had a number of staff dedicated to looking after business, but we did have our organisation split into three sales areas - residential, small business, and enterprise/government - so I decided to actually combine small business and enterprise/government into one department," he said.

The aim was clarity and ease for customers. "In the spirit of simplifying, making it easy for customers to talk to us and get what they need instead of being passed from one department to another, our frontline sales staff can now provide the same quality of information as business development managers," he said.

Some questioned whether frontline staff could handle the complex needs of large enterprise customers, but O'Keeffe said the proof is in the sales. "Most of these bigger services aren't actually complicated, they're just bigger - there's no reason why they can't be dealt with by frontline sales staff. There were a few naysayers who said it wouldn't work, but we're selling those bigger services directly out of our call centres now. It's nice to put naysayers in their place," he said.

When asked how new clients - whether enterprise or smaller IT providers - could try the company out, O'Keeffe was direct: "First, jump onto our Carbon Portal and have a bit of a look. It's open to everybody to register and create an account. You can start doing your service qualifications, you can look at the pricing, and all the other features. If you like what you see, chat to one of our partner managers. There'll be some agreements and terms to get sorted, but after that you can start ordering services straight away. Everyone's in it - easy," he said.

As Fuzzy Broadband's team continues to expand its offerings and grow its base, O'Keeffe sums up their approach: "Just making life easy for our partners and their customers has been the key."