John Linton
......and I hasten to add that I use the word 'girls' only in the sense of the Hollywood stereotype of teen females being obsessed with gossip and bitchiness and having three daughters and a wife, and being a great admirer of femininity in all of its glorious aspects, no direct or implied insult to womankind generally is intended.
My reason for making that comment is that over the past two days I have had:
three calls from 'prospective buyers'
four calls from 'journalists'
eleven calls from suppliers/business acquaintances
all, in one way or another either asking what I know about this or that ISP's current financial viability or asking me about Exetel's immediate plans for selling all or part of the company or merging/joint venturing with one or more other companies either completely or in some major activity.
Being the very plainly spoken person that my genetic make up, upbringing and education imposed on me, I probably didn't get as much information as I could have/should have as to why people I seldom/never before hear/heard from should think they could call me out of the blue and try to obtain, if in fact there was any truth to the various scenarios they were suggesting, what would be very, very sensitive and highly confidential information.
Among the things I am pretty certain, and I think I would know, are not going to happen/have happened are:
1. Exetel has not been sold to TPG's subsidiary Chariot
2. Exetel has not been acquired by Optus for non-payment of its bills
3. Exetel isn't about to merge with Dodo
4. Exetel hasn't sold 60% of its business to a "Singapore based VoIP provider"
5. John Linton isn't terminally ill and because of that illness isn't involved with Exetel any more
Among the things I have absolutely no idea about, nor would anyone have any reason for believing I would have, are:
1. Whether or not Dodo has major financial debt repayment problems with Optus
2. Whether Eftel's withdrawal of ADSL2 offerings were caused by financial problems with Optus
3. Whether AAPT has sold its stake in iiNet to Futuris
4. Any likelihood of '3' being sold to AAPT/Telecom NZ
5. That Adam Internet (who?) will appoint an administrator early next week.
I also don't know how many angels can dance on the head of a pin or the location of Atlantis.
I get, sometimes, three 'business' telephone calls a day - more often than not I get none - I discourage all business telephone contact. I cant remember the last time in my business life I got 18 calls in two days, largely from people I barely know and in three case people I've never known.
So if I got that incredible deluge of calls about 'whispers' (as one of the twee'er callers so quaintly put it) goodness knows how many, more sociable, people in this industry fared - their handsets must have melted.
It would be interesting to know what/who generated the wild speculation that seems to have been generated in the last two days?