Wednesday, April 29. 2009The Lunatically Doctrinairely Uneducated And Stupid Australian Labor Party......John Linton ....everything they do in areas that I understand (NBN, Internet 'Filtering') makes absolutely no sense and makes running a small Australian communications business more difficult.....God knows what is happening in the other million areas I don't understand....I assume the same level of crazy ineptitude is destroying every other area in Australian life. I received this email, via the suggestion box, earlier this morning: "I suggest you cancel your trial of internet censorship. I am writing to let you know that if you proceed with your trial of internet censorship I am going to find a new ISP. I appreciate the fact that you let me know. I understand that it might have been motivated by technical research. However I cannot support an ISP that voluntarily censors my internet. I have been a long term customer and apart from this I am very happy with the Exetel service. So I am very sad that you have taken this course. I am going to start searching for an new ISP tonight. I sincerely hope you will reconsider the trial before I find my new ISP so I do not have to churn. I hope you appreciate the feedback from a long term customer who befroe this has recommended you and referred many clients to your services. I look forward to your response." To which I responded: "Dear Sir, You must, of course, do whatever you consider to be in your own best interests. Exetel must do what it considers to be in its, and its almost 100,000 customers, including you, best interests. We are NOT Censoring the Internet and for you to describe our five day trial of a piece of technology to mitigate any subsequent actions by the Australian Labor party in such terms is ridiculous. Neither you, nor any other customer's internet can be "censored" by Exetel - and it never will be. It can be censored by the Australian Labor Party and if that comes about then Exetel must comply with Australian law but, and this is the point of the trial, we will comply with the Australian law in a way that technically imposes the least performance burden on our customers. For you to change suppliers has not changed, in any way, what will happen to your internet service should the Australian Labor Party proceed with its current insane policies on "internet filtering" - all you will do is to disadvantage yourself by ceasing to use a service that has, apparently, suited you very well for some time. John Linton" Now, I think I can be reasonably described as 'fairly scathing' in my opinions of the Labor Party's various ludicrous and lunatic 'initiatives' so to be put in a position of losing long term customers because of their more phantasmagorical stupidities is 'annoying'. It's obvious that this ALP nonsense was forced on them by the Religious Loony in the Senate but that is no excuse for potentially screwing up a major service because they need to get their more contentious legislation passed. The NBN1 and now NBN2 (NBN = No Broadband - Never) 'back of a bus ticket' election winning sound byte "policies" have ensured ADSL2 roll outs stopped dead and are unlikely to be re-started in any meaningful way in the near future (despite the generalistic mutterings of a couple of the companies who have committed to this technology). As everybody with more than one brain cell knows - "internet filtering" can never work and it MUST have some, as yet unknown, impact on the performance of any internet network which is mealy mouth speak for making the service more expensive to deliver. While the Labor Party is already bankrupting, more accurately has already bankrupted, the country and will shortly raise taxes to try and keep itself marginally solvent, the twin lunacies of the NBN2 and the IF are bringing the residential data service industry to a halt. It's obvious that the IF is so ridiculously stupid and unworkable that it would have had to be abandoned by now if it was going to be abandoned (and I suppose it still might be). However the humiliating back down by Krudd and Stupid Stephen on their NBN1 election promise has made that very much more difficult. Can Krudd get away with two "key" election promise back downs without even the dumb Australian electorate noticing? Just how dumb is the Australian electorate and the also not so bright Australian media?...pretty dumb based on the reaction to their acceptance of Krudd's "I knew NBN1 was never going to work but here's my back of half a bus ticket grand eight year vision for NBN2 designed to get me re-elected at least once and if you're really as dumb as you've proved to be so far - it could be good for twice". Why did no media 'interviewer ever ask him why, if he always knew it would never work did he: a) Propose it in the first place in March 2007? b) let a pointless and expensive evaluation process go on until April 2009 before admitting it was pointless? There is no credible answer to either of those questions except one. So when a small company like Exetel try's to mitigate any future damage caused to our customers by the actual go ahead of the IF lunacy (in the most understated and non-impacting way possible) we run the risk of losing long term customers....just as we have we have already lost thousands of customers due to the NBN1 ending the Optus ADSL2 roll outs.What is the most feared comment you can ever hear? Some thing like - "We're from the government and we're here to help you". ...and if the Australian electorate votes Labor again in the next election (after the current disastrous three year period it's hard to see how that could be possible but as Ms Gump once observed - "Stupid is as Stupid does") - then it may not be worthwhile continuing to run a communications business in Australia ........"Where did you put those truck drivers school applications, Mav?" Trackbacks
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What makes you assume that the government will allow individual ISPs to choose the filtering technology for use? Indications so far (to me) seem to be that the govt would mandate a particular technology.
If that's how you see it too, what advantage do you get testing one particular filtering technology, which has so far not been mentioned? Comment (1)
You should, of course, act on your knowledge and assumptions.
Exetel tends to act on its knowledge and assumptions. Maybe we are just stupid and irresponsible and have decided to annoy our customers because we are bored with how well Exetel is going and want to see if we can mess up the company? Irrational people do irrational things. Comments (2)
I can understand what you are doing completely from a service provider perspective, however bringing it to your customers' attention was indeed a huge risk and it looks like it's not going so well on the rapport side of things. I know how you like everything to be on the table in terms of your customer/provider relationship but something that can, and has been recieved with such negativity in the recent past (due to lack of knowledge completely) should have been kept from customers and conducted in strict confidence. If service speeds were affected, you could have used one of many reasons for the phenomena.
I've read the forum posts, and you and Steve have explained it as best as possible. Sadly customers just don't understand, and instead of trying to, they will moan about it. Comment (1)
The choice we have always made (and always suffered because we have made that choice) is to fully advise our customers of what we do.
Of course it would have been better not to have told customers what we are doing but then we would be just like [enter name of ISP of your choice] and I, personally would cut my throat rather than be like that. Comments (2)
Aside from the price and the included features one of the other things I like about Exetel is the fact that there is an openness about what goes on in the business, nothing is hidden behind marketing bullshit, I think it's quite naive to think that churning to another provider is somehow better, do people honestly believe that other ISP's won't also need to go through the same processes whether now or some time down the track, the real difference is most of them wouldn't tell the customers
Are they somehow delusional in thinking that Watchdog haven't been pestering every other provider to trial their solution, I'm sure any and every other provider that has a content filtering solution would have been beating down the doors of every ISP ever since this governments ideas were made public, I think the difference is that just about every other ISP's technical department doesn't have anything to do with their marketing department and nothing is made public I find this situation and the childish attitudes of some reminiscent of the introduction of P2P filtering with all sorts of people making wild exaggerations about Exetel's intent, so the answer was to churn out to a provider that wouldn't do such a thing, I hope they felt stupid when they found out their new ISP's were all caching P2P but were all hiding the fact Comments (2)
Why would someone churn just because Exetel is conducting a technology trial? It is short-term, so by the time you get around to churning, its over. If fitlering becomes mandatory, it will be mandatory for all ISPs. Again, no point churning.
Also, if it becomes mandatory, I'd rather be with an ISP that knows what it is doing and knows how to implement a filter with minimum impact. Comment (1)
Why would someone churn, I believe John already summed up why with a quote from Mrs Gump
Comments (2)
Considering there are only 3 "pipes" out of Australia for internet traffic, why don't they put the "filter" there instead of burdening every ISP with it?
Locally hosted sites can be shut down under other already-existing laws. Comment (1)
If this is true, very good point. The two problems I see with that are as follows:
1. Filtering at the ISP level allows an easy way to discover who the customer (not person) who wants to visit the sites. Therefore easy to tell the relevant authorities. 2. ISPs can (and do?) use satellite links too. Comment (1)
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