John Linton
Annette and I are at the end of our extremely crammed schedule in Sri Lanka having interviewed five prospective employees and visited, been visited by, 13 different government and commercial organisations in the last two days. We also managed to find time (and the contacts to arrange it) to meet with Sir Arthur C Clarke and get a book signed (with a ceremonial photo) for Steve. Our trip has been amazingly successful and we have accomplished each of the ten objectives we set out to do.
We have, subject to a board meeting formal approval later this month, decided to set up a company in Sri Lanka to both support the Australian company and to sell communications services to business and residential customers in Colombo.
Both Annette and I liked the place and most of all the people very much and we believe that Exetel's raison d'etre is a very good fit for what we want to do here in terms of making our product offerings better and lower cost in Australia and what we can also do for this country and some of its people - in minor but quite important ways for those affected.
Despite the brevity of our stay we met with all of the people (in government and in commerce) that have enabled us to reach such a positive conclusion in such a short space of time. These included:
1) Reaching an understanding with the Sri Lankan Bureau of Investment on how to obtain tax and foreign exchange concession relief.
2) Finding out from Sri Lanka Telecom when they would move from "No Wholesale access to last mile under any circumstances" which was very clearly stated by every contact we made to "Wholesale ADSL2 may be available on (nominated) date.
3) Meeting with the Telecommunications Regulatory Authority to understand how we could do what we would like to do in Sri Lanka and reaching that understanding.
4) Offering jobs to and having them accepted by two additional engineers.
5) Appointing a good accounting firm to represent us in completing the paperwork for setting up the company and obtaining the various licenses needed to operate here.
6) Finding exactly the right premises in exactly the right location (at exactly the right price) for our foreseeable future needs and having our offer verbally accepted.
7) Meeting with two private communications companies to build initial, friendly, relations with and who provided us with the base information that would have been very difficult to find out by any research methods I'm currently aware of.
8. Finding the right contacts and 'conduits' for recruiting two 'super' programmers to assist with the faster development of GURUS.
9) Being introduced to, and spending time with, the principal contact in the AHC who processes visa applications and getting the latest information on the 'don'ts' applyng to visa applicants - some things we'd never have thought of.
10) Meeting with a highly recommended company to handle the design, fit out and equipment of the office at prices we were more than happy to pay.
It's been a very long time since I've had two more productive days. It's also very invigorating to find a 'Telstra Dead Hand' suffocation free country where there may well be opportunities to do what we, and every other 'independent' communications company, would like to do in Australia but can't.
One last thing I just have to add - and this from a person known to have said the occasional less than kind thing about governments and government departments in the past. The Australian High Commission liaison person who made all the appointments for us and drove us to and from most of the meetings did an unbelievably thoroughly complete and brilliantly orchestrated job of ensuring we met everyone, and I stress EVERYONE, we asked to meet and then added people who proved immensely helpful who we would never have known to ask to meet. Apart from that exceptional competence he was a totally delightful human being and someone you would be happy to call a friend.
I'm totally exhausted so...it's goodnight from me.............
PS: The High Commissioner dropped in to have a quick chat over lunch so we got a lift back in his armoured BMW 7 Series (it's doors felt a bit heavy to open and close and the driver told us they weighed 400 kg each) - it wasn't a really fast trip back.