John Linton
I'm not sure whether this is something to be concerned about or an indication that carrier's can deal with the significant changes in wireless versus land line usage more promptly and effectively:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124344227596159029.html
Network congestion has been a problem from time to time across every carrier's and supplier's residential networks that I have been associated with since broadband was first offered in Australia (and that includes Telstra's initial ADSL offering where congestion was horrendous for most of the first 18 months of my usage (and don't talk about the outages that on occasions went on for days). It's no surprise that even one of the world's largest carriers will experience such issues but it's refreshing to see them, at least in this case, dealt with so promptly.
My concerns are obviously related to today in Australia and the heightened expectations end users have concerning what they "should be able to expect" from a broadband service in mid 2009 irrespective of whether it is delivered over wire line or wireless. After several years of generally trouble free broadband over wire line the expectations of wireless, at this stage of its deployment, by a large percentage of people are going to be much higher than the early expectations of broad band over wire lines. A simple expectation along the lines of the difference in expectation now that when you flick a switch your lights come on or when you turn a tap water comes out (not the same expectation as when electricity and water were first provided in the 1880s by the first city 'utilities'.
AT&T and many other major carriers in the USA and in the EU have all gone through the provisioning/saturation/re-provisioning processes with their wireless roll outs as have the mobile carriers in Australia. Of the Australian carriers only Telstra seems to have avoided vociferous 'public' complaint about under provisioning or cell saturation though you only have to look at some of the public fora to realise that the same level of 'over expectation' applies to any supplier of anything in this country - and presumably other countries. Irrespective of what should be the case there will always be issues with expectations not being met and carriers not dealing with congestion quickly enough for some percentage of end users which makes providing any new technology based on expensive infrastructures something that should be avoided by anyone with any sense. Clearly Exetel, or at least the people who run it, or more probably just one person involved in running Exetel never has had any sense.
We have enough experience now with around 3,000 HSPA users (plus our own personal experience) to know that HSPA is a great tool for anyone who can't get wire line ADSL and wants a connection that is far better than dial up and approaches/somewhat exceeds an ADSL 1500/256 connection a large percentage of the time but should never be relied upon to operate at those speeds 24 x 7. My personal experience recently in Benalla and Seymour (two areas that have cautions regarding capacity issues) over two days and two nights was that I got fast enough connection at all times (including alleged peak connection times) to write and receive emails, do this blog and interrogate our business data base without any problems. I don't play games or watch live video or stream radio so I have no idea how that would have worked. Similarly my VoIP mobile worked over the same network (Optus) without a problem calling the UK and Sydney.
However, I have little/no doubt that there will continue to be congestion issues at various times in various places as wireless networks attract more and more customers and, at least some of, the mobile carriers mis-guess, or are careless in planning for, the rate of growth in different areas of their networks. There is NO doubt that is going to happen and there is equally no doubt that the carriers will continually and constantly deny any such problems and the end user will blame Exetel and or Exetel's agents for any problem that occurs and dismiss any attempt at telling them that the problem is with the carrier's provisioning which they will dismiss as "passing the buck".
This is an unpleasant prospective scenario for everyone concerned but because it is very real it has to be planned for very carefully and, if possible, avoided either completely or as close to completely as can be achieved.
Because we realised this situation would exist at a significant level for at least the first two years of our provision of HSPA via Optus we have already put in place as many 'ameliorations' as we could to mitigate the more difficult situations we would encounter and/or the unreasonable expectations of the more unrealistic customers. The major 'protection' was to provide a no contract service option which has been taken up by almost 50% of our HSPA users so, in the event that they find the service unsuitable, they can simply stop using it. Most of those customer types sourced HSPA modems from sources other than Exetel so there was no 'wasted money' issue. For customers who bought modems from Exetel we were prepared to take them back but, over the first six months of providing HSPA services I don't think we have yet done that - I could be wrong but if I am it is a minute number.
To attempt to avoid the situation of having disappointed HSPA customers will need some serious thinking and some clever approaches that will need careful implementation and, probably, break with all the more conventional 'marketing' shibboleths that we are aware of. Certainly Optus Retail, Virgin/Optus, DoDo, Vodafone retail and 3 retail don't agree with anything we are considering and I don't think Telstra does either - based on their marketing of HSPA services which, at least to me, seems just plain crazy and seems to be aimed at creating maximum customer disappointment - but then again I know nothing about marketing or advertising.
It seems to me, based on our last six months or so of test marketing HSPA, that it is essential in avoiding the total waste of time and money that 'disappointed' customers cause, is to avoid having disappointed customers buy your service in the first place as nothing can be done subsequently to avoid all the unpleasantness such customers cause the supplier and the supplier causes for the disappointed customer. We have some five and a half years experience in the some ways of avoiding disappointment in ADSL customers but nothing like that with HSPA customers - but at least we understand the methodologies and processes.
In simple terms to avoid having unhappy/disappointed HSPA customers requires at least three things: no contracts, no hardware supply, a sales filter to prevent the likely 'disappointed' customer from considering signing up with you in the first place. I think that's pretty hard to do but if you eliminate "no hardware" and substitute that with hardware that the end user will need and will discourage 'disappointment likely' customers from signing up it gets much easier. To achieve that may well be more difficult than I think but I know it will be near enough impossible for any other supplier to copy because it would be total anathema to any self respecting "marketeer".
It will be an interesting re-introducton to 'marketing' - to avoid selling to any end user who will be disappointed given the unknown provisioning plans of the carrier and the sheer craziness of the various carrier's retail arm's promises and even more crazy promises of their more undisciplined wholesale customers.