Telstra Eats Another Piece of ISP Pie

Dominant Australian telco
Telstra has added another string to
its bow in the increasingly important area of managed network services with
the buy-out of the minority stakes of IBM and Lend Lease in a local joint venture.

Telstra has signed a letter of intent to purchase the remaining shares in
Advantra. The venture was formed in 1997 by combining some of the network
service businesses owned at the time by IBM and Telstra. No financial
details were disclosed.

Lindsay Yelland, MD of Telstra’s business solutions group, said Advantra
had moved closer to Telstra’s core business as it dabbled in e-commerce and
overseas markets.

“Advantra will give us extra resource capacity and functionality to
implement solutions and support our customers as well as a wider range of
products and services,” said Yelland. “We have moved away from provision
of telecommunications products to the provision of total solutions.”