John Linton
It's a long time in the past that I had to consider the rent versus buy in my personal life and I've never been in a position to do such a thing in my business life - either because I was an employee of someone else or because there never seemed to be any question of buying office space.
It has become something that needs to be looked at now; not because Exetel is extravagant with the amount of space we provide for our staff and necessary facilities but because we do pay enough rent each month to service a reasonable sized mortgage. We also are coming to the end of our twice re-signed lease late next year and we will need more space at that time if everything goes to plan.
We have also been considering setting up one of our NSW PoPs in our own premises as the costs of rack space per month continues to creep upwards and if we add the rack space rental to the office space rental we are paying out over $A250,000 a year in what used to be referred to as 'dead money'. Our bank manager was enthusiastic at the concept of a one for one swap of rental money in to mortgage repayments and indicated we would have a quick approval if we submitted a loan request that made economic sense to the business (though, as Annette muttered under her breath "...and provided we added more of our personal assets as collateral)".
So Annette has been looking at the commercial property for sale ads in the SMH with more interest than in the past and has begun to get an appreciation of what may be on offer. After a few weeks of scouring the SMH commercial property it seemed there is very little on offer, at least at pricing we could consider, but yesterday, for the first time, there were two possibilities in the paper and, on our way to dinner yesterday evening, we saw another possible property advertised for sale.
As with deploying our own infrastructure the 'back of the envelope' calculations make such a project a no brainer financially but the long commitment periods for property and infrastructure are a concern that will need to be carefully considered. I have no experience with buying commercial property and no desire to learn about the ins and outs of such a market but as the amount of money involved is so large (in terms of what we need to commit to personally) I do realise I'm going to have to acquire some new knowledge in a relatively short time frame.
The more these investments begin to become very real possibilities, if not just at this time becoming real necessities, the more it seems to me that Exetel is not of a sufficient size to justify this 'over-capitalisation' - particularly with the range of new technologies and new political/carrier 'groupings' is such a state of flux. While we have 'done everything differently' in setting up and operating Exetel this may well be a step too far - too 'brave' a decision even for my risk taking mind set.
While we have some possible 'alliances' to consider that might be mutually beneficial, personally, I have serious misgivings about the sorts of people who run the sorts of companies with whom we are currently talking to - and we aren't talking in any way seriously for the time being. The problem with being very 'independently minded' is that is very rare to meet someone else you can relate to equably over time.
It will take me a very, very long while to lose my white hot anger about the subsequent revelations concerning the Lorraine Rose/Eftel actions of April 2005 and I have a feeling that there are quite possibly other equally unethical slime buckets (I'm indebted to Paul Keating for adding that phrase to my vocabulary) running businesses like those to make anything but a long, extremely detailed examination of possible 'partners' with incredible caution exercised before considering even giving most companies we could consider the time of day - let alone access to anything of value that we control.
Whenever i think about it I come to the, sad and depressing, conclusion that I've never really met anyone in business whom I would trust and, with only one or two exceptions, I've never met anyone I actually liked as a person - maybe that is an inevitable result of being involved in commerce.
The sun is shining again in Sydney and it's past time to go and do something to get away from a computer screen and keyboard. and think more pleasant thoughts