It doesn’t have a final name yet, but iiNet is planning to replace its well-regarded BoB modem/router with a new NBN-friendly design later this year. iiNet is also looking into introducing ZigBee-based home automation services.
iiNet Labs showed off a prototype of the new design at the Tech Leaders conference in Queensland earlier this week. It has built-in support for VDSL, which means that customers using it to connect to an ADSL service currently could also use it to connect to an NBN service if one became available in their area. It doesn’t support the DOCSIS standard used for HFC cable connections, though, so if that does become a major element of the revamped NBN, you’ll still need a different device.
iiNet research and development manager Simon Watt said that a final release date hadn’t been decided, but it was expected out this year. It’s unlikely to be keeping the BoB name, though.
The iiNet team is also working on introducing home automation options based around the ZigBee protocol, and is running a limited trial with 200 customers. A home automation service could, for instance, automatically feed data about energy usage into a central console, and allow you to automate switching devices on an off.
That’s not such a near-term ambition, however. “It might be another two years before it’s embraced,” Watt said. “The cost and the simplicity of the devices is key. We won’t launch a half-baked product. If we are the first cab off the rank amongst Australian telcos, it’s very important to get it right.”
Comments
10 responses to “iiNet’s BoB Successor Due Later This Year”
I dont think that word means what you think it means, BoBLite is ok, but BoB2 is a POS.
i think they forgot to add “anymore” to that, although a case could be made to say that BoB2 is actually one third baked (Phone is crap, Answering machine is almost unusable, router is on par with elcheapo brands.
Hopefully they will give the suckers that bought BoB2 a hefty discount (or just swap it out), it cant be any worse than Bob2 but i still think people should be cautious.
My BoB is likely the most unreliable modem/router I have ever owned.
Those bolded words alone are more than enough to turn me off the idea. The BoB is terrible.
my Bob2 is OK and I love my FetchTV. Good thing iiNet’s customer service is awesome.
I look forward to SOB (Son of Bob) however am going with Z-Wave for HA at the moment. Looking forward to my Almond+ from Securifi if they ever get their act togetehr…
Two major technologies seem to dominate in the consumer automation space, Zigbee and Z-Wave – which horse to back? Both offer very similar outcomes and iiNet have decided to back the Zigbee protocol and embraced the fact it is a low power mesh network, low power meaning smaller devices can be battery operated and have a relatively long life span before replacing the battery which means portable automation devices and convenience such as motion detectors and similar; mesh network meaning it has an extended range when you have multiple devices able to communicate with each other and then back to the central hub in the home, real life experiments have shown a range of 3,000 mtrs achievable using multiple Zigbee devices hopping their way back to the central controller. Many larger white good manufacturers seem to be jumping on the Zigbee horse too and a larger development community has embraced the Zigbee home automation standard and light link technology (did you know the Zigbee term comes from the dance the honey be does – humph…
You have to be joking…… I have been with Ozemail/iinet since mid 1999 and up until this past 6 months I agree with you, the customer service was fantastic.
I moved house in November last year and it was a comedy of errors. 8 days post move I was still waiting for internet connection and my phone number to be migrated, and they were notified about the move 1 month in advance.
The day my account was migrated I lost the last 10 months of emails. 3 months later I am STILL WAITING for my mail to be restored, It keeps getting deferred as it is now on a different server.
I get a phone call approx once a week to say my email has been fixed and I point out to the tech emails between 2/13 and 11/13 are missing from all folders.
Not a happy camper here……
I’ve been with iiNet for 11 or 12 years. I moved house once it was a complete snafu, took weeks after their estimated date of connection to get it connected (partly their fault [a typo], partly telstra [general laziness]), didnt notice any weird happenings with my email.
Moved again a year later, iiNet was fine it was just telstra delayed it [and did a shitty job at that, had to get them to run a new line less than a year later). Although i had to call them to get my mail moved over cause they did something weird with that, and im still peeved i needed a new password, i had memorized my old one and now its an extra character longer minimum.
Relocations are not their strong suit it seems, but every other problem they are great to deal with. But as usual 90% of the issues are telstra related.
Hi Suzii,
My name’s Tal, I’m the senior representative of iiNet’s social media team.
It’s not good that an issue with your emails has been going on for so long, and we’d definitely like to see what can be done to help you out here to get this resolved.
If you’d like to send me an email with some further details of the account and issue to my corporate email address located on my Twitter profile – https://iihelp.iinet.net.au/node/7781 – I’ll be able to have this investigated further.
Regards,
Tal
Because they’ve acquired so many smaller ISPs, they’ve tried to do the right thing and keep the call centres going so as to not force people out of jobs… Problem is, anytime you speak to someone in Cape Town or Manila, you get poor customer service and issues crop up. We had never had a problem for several years until we moved house and the Cape Town call centre screwed it up, and everything in the last 6 months too.
The iiNet CSRs are paid so crappily that it’s very hard for them to be motivated to provide good customer service, and then you’ve got shocking products like the BoB2 which they acknowledge they don’t know why some problems occur (such as faulty failover PSTN). They’ve really dropped in the last year or two, sad, but I guess that’s what happens when you become a larger company and don’t handle the culture well enough?
when I called (a few months ago) my guy from Cape Town was fantastic. Unfortunately he still did not correct my voip issue but the guy genuinely tried his best.
NoB?
Only thing I liked about BoBs successor the Budii is that it is designed by Australias own leading industrial design company “Design + Industry”