John Linton
We held our 47th board meeting last night which is a fair indication of the disciplined approach we have taken to running Exetel since we made the decision to change the direction of the company a little over 4 years ago. We have held a board meeting at roughly the same time for each of the 48 months of Exetel's existence except for July 2007 when Annette and I were overseas for virtually the whole of that month. There is no statutory requirement to hold a board meeting more than once a year but we deemed it to be prudent, if not essential, to hold very regular board meetings in the tumultuous and financially challenging periods which every 'start up' commercial venture must go through - and we have certainly had to deal with some major 'challenges' throughout the past four years.
Our board meetings these days are more relaxed affairs without the continual 'crises' that seemed to characterise much of the first three years - and beyond. That is a very welcome change/development as its really very wearing to have to deal with ongoing problems and difficulties for, literally, years on end.
Some things never change though.
Annette's yearly request for a salary increase for Exetel's working directors was, as it has been in all but the first year, turned down despite Annette's logical points that every other Exetel employee has had their remuneration doubled in that period. Just one of the problems of assessing your own performance totally dispassionately.
Similarly we had a bit of a chuckle over the latest offer to "buy Exetel" before moving quickly on to more realistic considerations.
We reviewed the large number of statutory obligations we are burdened with (payroll tax, superannuation payments, PAYG tax deduction payments, tax itself, workers compensation insurance, general insurance, federal police 'assistance' warrants etc) and satisfied ourselves that everything was compliant and up to date.
We noted, regretfully that although we had advised eight employees that their remuneration would be increased in January not one of them had even acknowledged the increase let alone expressed any thanks for it. Perhaps they each felt they should have got a much higher increase?
We discussed the necessity/viability of increasing the prices of ADSL1 plans but deferred that decision until we were able to offer a replacement 3G/4G plan.
The progress on integrating the Net Enforcer and PeerApp P2P controllers was discussed along with the estimates of what the new Akamai caching cluster would deliver and what this might mean in terms of modifying the additional IP bandwidth forecasts.
We tut tutted over the monthly revision, always upwards, of new capital expenditure required and briefly discussed the necessity of moving from the tried and true 'modular' model based on Cisco 7301s to the more 'monolithic' move to using Cisco 10000s.
We noted that all parts of the business were experiencing an unusual 'spurt' in new orders and activations above and beyond what has happened in previous 'Januarys'.
We approved the first of the funding donations to fauna protection and briefly discussed the other proposals being considered.
We briefly noted our satisfaction that Exetel had yet another record revenue month - the 47th consecutive increase in revenue of Exetel's short 'life' to date.
...and we enjoyed another very pleasant meal in one of Sydney's better restaurants while we held the board meeting - the only 'perk' we allow to the directors of Exetel.
The minutes of the meeting were issued earlier this morning as they always have been and the various decisions made at last nights meeting have been disseminated to the people affected by them or required to put them in to effect - again as promptly as they always have been.
Such parts of the detailed running of any business are seldom, if ever, considered by anyone other than the directors of a business but I think Exetel is as good as any commercial enterprise in how it operates the key reviews and decision making of business operations.