DART Internet

DART Internet, was an internet service provider founded in 2003 by James Edward Austin and based in Fortitude Valley, a suburb of Brisbane, Australia. It offered cut-price Internet access with unlimited data usage, and discounted setup fees which at the time were unknown in the Australian ISP Industry.

DART quickly grew beyond its system capabilities, running out of bandwidth frequently, before forming Direct Corporation in early 2004, in which three additional directors, Ranald McDonald, Michael Looke, and Stephen Thompson were added to the board.

Direct Corporation was considered a failure, with the new directors sacking James Austin following several disagreements. Debts of the business began running up into the millions.

In a rash business decision by the company s new Managing Director, Ran McDonald, it obtained billing and management system services from Telenet Australia, further hindering the business functions because the new systems were largely incompatible with the data held on the original systems.

Many customers reported that after the migration to the Telenet systems, they were being double billed for internet services, and that their accounts were being randomly disabled for no apparent reason.

Reports from its staff began to emerge on [http://forums.whirlpool.net.au Whirlpool.net.au] that it had failed to pay any employee income tax or superannuation, and that the business was several weeks behind in paying wages.

Eventually, its payments fell severely into arrears by several months, its upstream provider [http://www.connect.com.au AAPT] called in Pricewaterhouse Coopers to act as administrator for the company, and had the business placed into receivership in August 2004.

In early November 2004, the administrators announced that the business had been sold to [http://www.hotkey.com.au Hotkey Internet Services] for between $200,000 and $300,000 - a fraction of what it was originally worth.

=External links=

*[http://www.dart.net.au DART Internet] *[http://www.telenet.net.au Telenet] *[http://www.connect.com.au AAPT/Connect.com.au] *[http://www.pwcglobal.com Pricewaterhouse Coopers] *[http://www.hotkey.com.au Hotkey Internet Services]