John Linton Perhaps it's just a freak time or maybe it's the fact that I'm still working well past the time I should have stopped but I'm beginning to think that providing communications services using a wholesale arrangement is not something that any sensible person should involve themselves in as they can't control the quality of the services they provide to end users.
It's similar scenario to my disappointment at missing the Geelong Flag Unfurling last Sunday - despite all my careful and conservative actions I was prevented from seeing a ceremony that was of some importance to me (I'd waited 41 years for it) by some uncaring drone in Qantas.
As I write the iSeek network that Optus uses to connect WA ADSL1 customers from WA to Exetel has been 'down' for over 18 hours. During that time Optus has offered no meaningful/believable explanation for the issue and given no meaningful/believable explanation of when it will be resolved.
So 1,000+ Exetel customers in WA have every reason to feel that Exetel is a terrible provider of services and we will lose business both now and in the future because of the ineptitude of our wholesale provider. Fair enough - Exetel shouldn't put themselves and therefore their customers in such a position and therefore, clearly, it's Exetel's fault. I can accept that- I spent until 4 am this morning not sleeping because of the deep frustration of putting Exetel in and therefore customers in this position. I doubt that anyone at Optus (let alone iSeek) lost any sleep let alone worried about the damage to their business - in fact many of their executives probably didn't even know there was a problem based on the number of people I called whose mobiles weren't answered.
It's not the first time that a major wholesale provider has acted in a way that beggars belief that such actions/inactions could occur in a properly managed commercial enterprise and it obviously won't be the last.
I think, for me, it means that I can't continue to be involved in such situations as there is no way I can continue to deal with the anger that such thoughtlessness and uncaring attitudes towards their responsibilities engenders in me.
Exetel has already ended the business association with AAPT for the supply of new ADSL2 services (whose take over of Powertel with whom we had a very reasonable relationship for 4 years has trashed any ability to properly provision or fault fix an end user service - fortunately as long as the service stays 'up' it runs well on the old Powertel network which was always rock solid).
We are now faced with the decisions as to what we do in the medium term future regarding the provision of what services we can provide to end users without constantly being confronted with situations over which we have no control but for which we take extreme operational and financial pain.
Doubtless I am too tired to make sensible decisions at this time which is OK because no decision can be made for a while of any meaningful action(s). However, it seems to me, and as I said yesterday in the reverse of this, that Exetel should no longer plan to use wholesale services to provide 'value added' services to end users as a sensible business modus vivendi and must now re-think its future as a company operating in the communications marketplaces.
I think this will be my last major change - I think I said that when I reluctantly agreed to help set up Exetel.