Sunday, August 9. 2009Higher Allowances? - Lower Prices? - More Freebies?....John Linton .....new options now abound with a single action....or maybe it's the thought that the annual break is ony 3 weeks away? Exetel's July was a very good month - on target or a bit above and August's first week was very strong so if we were a 'normal' ISP we would count ourselves fortunate, hoped it all continued on in the same way and do absolutely nothing - but we aren't like other ISPs at all so we almost certainly won't do that. Perhaps it's premature, but I feel that the time has come to reassess our residential ADSL offerings in light of the dramatic re-alignment of the bandwidth usage following the change to the 'off peak' bandwidth period and the vast improvements that has made to the efficiency of usage across the whole 24 hour period. If the trends over the last week are to continue (which logic suggests is more likely than not) then we have achieved the 'impossible' in terms of bandwidth usage reversing the peak period from 5 pm to 11 pm to 2 am to 3 am and then 7am to 12 noon. It has also allowed us to eliminate the usage of the Allot Net Enforcer (used to control P2P bandwidth) except from 9 am to 12 noon - 3 hours a day rather than at various degrees of severity for 9 - 10 hours a day. Of course, a proportion of this 'dramatic' turn around has come from the completion of the decentralisation of the network, the use of the different State/Territory time zones and the dramatic fall in IP bandwidth costs and some customer connectivity bandwidth costs over the last two months or so. I think I mentioned that these issues of themselves would deliver some savings in the costs of providing wire line broadband services by mid 2009 and this has proven to be the case.......although the likelihood of the $A staying at its current high level is not entirely certain. So with a 'gift' of 20% more network capacity together with additional cost reductions of close to 10% in service delivery there is some room to make a series of changes which is something I'm always inclined to do just before I take a break from the business and have some sort of holiday in a totally different and relaxing environment. I have been trying to find a rationale by which to accomplish this for the last two days but either my mind is too tired or I have lost inspiration but I haven't come up with anything very interesting - perhaps it's never having this much scope before that is making the job more difficult but, whatever the reason(s), I have no idea of what to do and, worse, I am having difficulty framing the overall objectives to be met. I've had a look at a number of ISPs who our current users churn away to but I can't see anything that appears to be better than we already offer and I think that a fairly large percentage of the 'churn aways' are to ISPs who either have ADSL2 in exchanges where Optus doesn't (though, just like someone turning off a tap - the churns to Telstra ADSL2 have stopped, at least for the moment) or are moving to TPG on one or other of their 'super special' attractive priced deals which are beyond our reach/pricing parameters. Balancing the spending of the money 'available' to be spent between current users and that to be spent to attract new users is always very difficult especially as we use the 'connection costs' on a continual basis to control the volume of new customers (putting the service activation fees up and down to increase or decrease the rate of new customers we add to the network) in any one month. Also for the first time in our 'history' we have left old plans in ace for the users who were on them when we changed plans over the past year instead of our previous practice of asking all customers who were out of contract to select one of the new plans or if that didn't suit them to churn to a plan that did suit them with another provider. so I have been dithering around getting nowhere trying to find a sensible 'across the board' basis for providing better value in the best possible way to all users of the different 'tiers' of customers old, older and brand new. So I suppose the best solution will be to increase the allowances on all plans and create a new low end plan in each service range allowing those customers who wish to do so to 'down grade' their current plan/allowance to the one below that wil now have a higher allowance or, in the case of the lowest plan users to downgrade to the new lowest plan. We can also then reduce the new customer activation fees which will be a double 'bonus' for new sign on customers for a few weeks as well. Perhaps, together with an increase in some of the add ons (plus the SMS cost reduction I already mentioned) will be attractive enough to make current users happy(ier) and also increase the attractiveness to possible new users? It is quite amazing when you think about what the change to the off peak start time has made - instead of considering increasing pricing by 3 - 4% to deal with something less than a thousand users have caused we can consider decreasing the pricing to 100,000 users by 5 - 6% - if only we had done this 5 years ago - what would we have achieved? Trackbacks
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I suggest you bring back the PAYU plans.
They are particularly attractive to "pensioners" and "low capacity" users. Even if the PAYU plans also had the "add-ons" package, I imagine that only a small proportion of PAYU users would actually use them to any great degree. Regards, Harry. Comment (1)
It's interesting to hear that you are considering doing something for your "older" customers as generally you don't touch grandfathered plans. Does this mean you might consider removing the added Admin Charge for the older plans and return to just a $1.10 charge for CC usage? I guess you are probably sick of that question but that is one of the best things you could do for your older customers in my opinion.
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hi john ,
quote- It is quite amazing whenyou think about what the change to the off peak start time has made - instead of considering increasing pricing by 3 - 4% to deal with something less than a thousand users we can consider decreasing the pricing to 100,000 users by 5 - 6% - if only we had done this 5 years ago - what would we have achieved. - you know i am a fervent supporter of you john , but iv'e got to call you on this one.... surely this is impossible -- but i do see that david copperfield the magician is due in town shortly. cheers bill. Comment (1)
Would it be an option to remove the $3 admin fee on older plans? When this fee was introduced it was suggested it would be temporary. Removing it may have a positive effect on long term customers.
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...alternatively those plan users could cange to the current plans that don't have that fee?
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+1. Great idea.
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I'm having a lot more new customers asking about unmetered iView ( ABC's online TV). I've tried it myself and it's excellent.
This might be a good selling point and shouldn't be prone to abuse. Uses are only using the bandwidth while they're watching the show. Unlike unmeted downloads where a select few will try to downoad every show they can think of (because they might want to watch it some day). Comments (2)
Pipe are trialling it and if that's successful we will ffer it.
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What about unmetered iView (and in the future other video sites) for an extra $5 or $10 a month?
The data would be peered so cheap/free the only issue would be saturating the backhaul I assume? This sort of stuff is the future and at some point needs to be addressed. Comment (1)
Hi John,
As a current Exetel customer on the older plans I'd like to see an IPTV offer similar to TPG. Even if it comes at a slight add on cost if you offer a quality service with good choice it would increase the attractiveness of my current plan for me. Also a question. Will you be re-offering the flexibility to have the peak-off peak between 12 to 12 or 2 to 2? I'm currently on the 2-12 (didn't switch before) but come November I'm thinking about going 2 to 2. Thanks. Comment (1)
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