Complaints to compliments: solving the hybrid holiday internet challenge

COVID-19 has made a hybrid working environment the norm for many Australians and more people are also mixing work with holidays, all of which can present an internet networking challenge for regional Australia.

Bussleton’s award-winning Mandalay Holiday Resort, located two-and-a-half hours south of Perth near the south western tip of Australia, has always been a great place to get away from it all. With nearby attractions such as whale-watching and the Margaret River district, it has delighted visitors since it opened as a caravan park in 1964.

Director Rhys Johnson, whose family has operated the resort from the beginning, says the internet infrastructure that served the business was struggling to meet the digital demands of holidaymakers. “They want some space where they can get work done but then switch off at the end of the day or during breaks to enjoy the location with their family,” he says.

The resort’s guest Wi-Fi network needed to deal with everything from families streaming Netflix and kids games to providing reliable connections to support Zoom calls and remote working.

The network connection was often not up to the task, however, and it was starting to attract negative reviews from guests, Johnson says.

Challenge for regional businesses

Like many regional businesses, Mandalay Resort had struggled to find better connectivity options so it engaged Computer West, who understood the importance of a robust solution. “These days every family in a holiday park has multiple devices,” managing director Keith Poole says.

However, reliable network availability remained a hurdle until 2020, when Bussleton became a business nbn^® fibre zone, one of eight now servicing regional West Australian businesses.*

Through service providers, business nbn^®’s fibre zones offer reliable, high-speed fibre connectivity to millions of business locations across Australia.^

Additionally, for an estimated 90 per cent of business locations within the nbn network footprint, phone and internet providers can order business nbn Enterprise Ethernet fibre services with a $0 upfront connection cost if they sign up to a 3-year contract.^# From September 2021, providers can also access discounted wholesale prices of up to 58 per cent for eligible premises.^{#, ##}

This means business-grade connectivity is now within the price range of regional businesses such as Mandalay Holiday Resort^# and working with partners such as Computer West helps them find the very best business solutions.

Opening new opportunities

Johnson says it was Computer West that alerted him to the availability of business nbn fibre services in Bussleton. “We made the change as soon as we heard that Enterprise Ethernet was available in our area,” he says.

Since its adoption, Mandalay Resort is now much better equipped to handle high demand in peak holiday periods and the greatly improved connectivity, apart from enhancing guest experiences, is also opening up opportunities. A new business centre is planned to help attract more working holidaymakers, while Mandalay is also eyeing the international business traveler market. Once a source of complaints, the resort’s Wi-Fi network has become one of its selling points, with compliments rolling into the office,” Johnson says.^

* business nbn^® Enterprise Ethernet is only available in business nbn^® fibre zones, nbn^® Fixed Line network footprint and at limited premises served by the nbn^® Fixed Wireless and Satellite networks.

^ Your experience, including the speeds actually achieved over the nbn^®network, depends on the configuration over which services are delivered to your premises, whether you are using the service during the busy period, and some factors outside of nbn’s control (such as your equipment quality, software, broadband plan or how your provider designs its network). If your service provider has not selected a bandwidth in the highest of three classes of service available for business nbn^® Enterprise Ethernet, the speeds you experience may be affected by contention on the nbn^® network, particularly in busy periods.

# nbn is a wholesaler and does not control costs charged by service providers. Customers should contact their preferred provider to ask about availability and any fees and charges from their provider that may be applicable. These pricing offers are not available for most premises in the nbn^® Fixed Wireless or Satellite footprints or for most premises which have complex connections – further costs are likely to apply to these premises.

## The 58 per cent wholesale pricing discount is calculated on the basis of a service provider ordering, for a business located outside any of the existing 295 nbn^® Business Fibre Zones and that was previously in Zone 3 but is now in Zone 1, the business nbn^® Enterprise Ethernet High Class of Service with a 100/100Mbps wholesale speed tier.

Find out more about how business nbn and Computer West delivered game-changing connectivity solutions to Mandalay Holiday resort.