John Linton
.......via Sri Lanka (for a quarterly progress review) and then two days in Bangkok to deal with some outstanding personal issues. Two weeks in the rural backwaters of the SW UK and two days in London have been exceptionally pleasant and, as always, I don't like the thought of returning to Australia - a typical feeling of most people who take a holiday I imagine. I found the mobile HSPA service throughout the trip faster and more available than a year ago and lower cost - by a long way. My tests in London of the 14.4 performance was inconclusive with the top speed I could generate being a little over 4 mbps down. I guess it is an indication of the future of HSPA in Australia but as there can be no assessing a likely time frame it isn't much use to me, you or to anyone else.
While I was here I also looked for a version of the 'magic' box we have been looking for over the past 18 months (maybe longer) but apart from some references in some PC magazines to pretty generic router/modems there was, I thought strangely, no mention of such devices. That leads me to think that there is no demand in Australia for end users to use HSPA as a standalone broad band service as we perceive there to be in Australia. Perhaps we are wrong to perceive that to be the case? Personally I would have thought the need to connect HSPA to more than one computer would be quite prevalent in most households. I would also have thought that there would be a sensible demand to use the HSPA service to save money on voice telephone calls via VOIP - perhaps that assumption is also wrong? As I have been wrong so many times in my 'decision making' life it wouldn't surprise me.
There is some sign in Australia that at least one 'independent' importer is bringing a router that also supports VoIP and has a slot for an HSPA modem at a lower price than the 'brand names' but their pricing to us is still way more than a 'mass market' buyer would pay. I, quite possibly in my ignorance, have always believed that the end user price for a combined router/modem/FXS/wifi/ethernet/HSPA 'magic box' had to retail for less than $A200.00 which meant a buy price for Exetel of around $A130.00 to be able to give our agents a 25% margin on sale and additional money for 'installation/configuration'. We can now source the base unit (but with a slot for the HSPA modem rather than including the HSPA chip set) for around $US115.00 and we can probably find a suitable Huawei HSPA stick for around $A50.00 which would achieve the end user price of $A195.00 but wouldn't give an agent much of a margin on the 'box sale'.
However.....and I guess this might explain why the UK ISPs aren't offering the HSPA chip set built in to the 'magic box'....with 2,000,000 HSPA users already in Australia using HSPA modems there is quite a market for just selling the HSPA service to end users who already have HSPA modems to plug into a box. There is also the fact that HSPA modems are already being bought by the big carriers in the UK for something less than $US15.00 and it just hasn't been worthwhile for ISPs to source boxes with the chip set 'on board' - though there are more and more notebooks and laptops being built with the chip set included in the base device.
So it looks as though we can now get the 'magic box' custom built with the chip set included for something like $A185.00 landed and cleared in to Australia. However the ship date for that box would be still several months away and would miss our "Christmas Promotion" deadlines. On the other hand we could get the current version of the box (with just the slot) for a little over $A100.00 and sell it to people who already have their own (any brand) HSPA modem or we can provide our own HSPA modem at close to $A60.00 (inc GST) while we test market what the demand is for these units. Delivery may meet our Christmas requirement though it would be very tight.
In any event the hunt for the perfect device is reaching an end with only the buy price to be reduced to a sensible level which could be done in the short term by buying larger quantities than we feel comfortable with (and sell to other ISPs) or just rely on increasing manufacturing quantities generally to reduce the price. One way or another we might be in a position to make a decision immediately after we get back to Australia and then push ahead with a "Christmas" package of HSPA service, VoIP, Modem/Router/HSPA Device/ATA/WIFI that uses the customer's current telephone handset.
I think I said this last September?