John Linton I completed the Exetel 'proposal' to the mobile carrier with whom we've had the most dealings over the past twelve months which sets out what we could reasonably deliver over the next 8 quarters (starting April 2008). I submitted this a few minutes ago in conjunction with the two other companies with whom we have formed a very loose 'alliance'. we will meet with the carrier over the next few days to determine whether it is a 'go/no go' and then, if it's accepted, move rapidly to put the back end facilities in place to allow us to accept applications and to activate/deactivate connections.
Our submission is based on some 25,000 of our current customers (who use less than 2.5 gb of downloads per month) moving from their current Exetel Telstra based ADSL1 plans to new 3G, moving to '4G' over the next 18 months, plans at something like the following prices:
1 gb - $27.50 per month
2 gb - $32.50 per month
3 gb - $37.50 per month
Speeds would be around 2 mbps/512 kbps
VoIP would be included at 100 free cals (national and local)
Activation fee would be sub $100.00 (no charge on a 24 month contract)
No off peak allowance
We have 'committed' to selling an additional 100,000 connections over the 8 quarters (on top of the 25,000 'churns') which is less than the minimum requested by about 50% but our other two 'partners' have more than made up for our lack of 'bravery' and the total number is close to what the carrier originally requested.
We got a 'pre-approval' last Friday for the $A800,000 required for our 'share' of the gateway so the decision now lies with the carrier and, I suppose, our ability to deal with the many unresolved issues raised during the discussions to date.
While it's very much our preferred way of going (buying mobile data access from a major Australian carrier) we've arranged to meet with the US based 'minute aggregator' in Singapore in mid February following a very cordial meeting held in Sydney two Fridays ago. If they proceed with their Australian plans I think that could be an 'almost as good as' scenario for Exetel as the rates are a little better and we would be able to develop a one on one relationship rather than being the smallest of three as in the scenario I've outlined above.
Whether either of these two arrangements will turn out to be implementable and then the volumes required met is, of course, not possible to predict. However three obvious things have come out of our search for a data over mobile solution:
1) It's going to be expensive to set up.
2) We won't be able to do it by ourselves.
3) There are very, very few other parties that we would be able to form a workable 'consortium' relationship with.
I've learned a great deal about many things in this, to date, fruitless exercise not least of which is the increasingly shorter life wire line will play in any form of telephony or data carriage future.
It will be an exciting few weeks.