Saturday, December 5. 2009Business Wireless Broadband.......John Linton .....one 'last' area in today's communications marketplaces that the bottom feeders can't screw up? I have no idea of the market size for Business Broadband compared to 'residential' broadband but I don't know anyone in business who doesn't either use a Blackberry or have a data capable mobile handset and also has a wireless broadband capable laptop/notebook. So my rough as guts ball park estimate is something like 600,000 'business' people currently use a mobile wireless service at the moment or something like one third of total wireless broadband users. Of whatever the real number really is I would guess that 70% use Telstra, 15% use Optus and the remaining 15% would be split between Vodafone and 3. We have spent some time developing a 'business', really 'corporate' wireless broadband offering and will begin marketing this offering in the week before Christmas and then through to the end of January to prepare for a major marketing effort from 1st February through to the end of the financial year. Our objectives are to sell to one thousand 'corporate' customers over that period based on 'an offer that can't be refused' and, much more importantly, an offer that can't be easily copied by the scummier operators in the communications market having re-learned some of the more obvious lessons from our Country Broadband project. AS PTB once allegedly said - "never underestimate the stupidity of the average American" we learned to - "never underestimate the duplicity of the scummy end of the communications reseller operators". From the 'investigations we have carried out we believe that the main characteristics that business users need (which can't be provided by the bulk resellers of the mobile carrier's retail offerings) include: 1) Fixed IP's for easy VPN implementation 2) 'Fleet' Plans for usage optimisation 3) 'Fleet' control in the company's hands to deal with allocation and re-allocation of devices and sims nd usage control. 4) Lower costs than 'retail' plans "adapted" for 'business' use 5) Engineering support rather than 'shop assistant/residential help desk' support 6) Future price decrease protection There are undoubtedly other 'labels' that other investigators might use but my view is they are either covered within the six categories listed above or they really aren't relevant - I could be wrong about that but from what we have looked at and investigated with a number of 'successful' business users of wireless broadband and several 'unsuccessful' users the real needs are as described above. (I made reference to some of our investigations in a previous musing. As far as I'm aware none of these characteristics can be met by the Layer 3 bulk resellers) and the few Layer 2 Optus 'partners' would be unprepared to make the pricing available even if they had the desire and ability to sell and support wireless broadband products in the business marketplaces....again I may be wrong but based on what we have looked at to date it seems to be a correct set of assumptions. When we talked with the ten or so companies that had either bought from us or had bought from Telstra or Optus all of them had bought 'residential' wireless broadband packages from retail stores in the case of Telstra or from 'partners' in the case of Optus, Vodafone and 3. Even our two business customers had bought from our web site at residential rates though they quickly found their way to dealing with us on a person to person basis. I am assuming that the much larger companies (like CBA) bought their services direct from Telstra Corporate but I'm not sure how that operates. We got good information from these investigations and have developed some corporate pricing that is, at least currently, unmatchable in today's published offerings: http://www.exetel.com.au/corporate-hspa-pricing.php Apart from the very low pricing, in today's terms, another key component that the new Exetel offerings addresses that was a major point of unhappiness by every one of the corporate users we spoke with is the 'no contract' period. Each one of the people I spoke with while doing this research was 'fed up' (other words were actually used to express their unhappiness) that they had entered in to, mostly, two year contracts and were forced to pay prices that were double or treble what current market prices were. Price protection is a key element of the Exetel business wireless broadband offering....which the various carrier resellers can never address. I fully realise that you are always most happy with your planning before you actually submit it to the test of marketplace acceptance but, after my errors in the country broadband promotion, I do think I have ensured the lesson learned from that expensive experience has been fully dealt with in developing this new initiative. I guess time will, as always, determine the accuracy of that belief.
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Thank you for trying with the Country Broadband scheme. Although it didn't live up to your hopes, it certainly enriched the lives of many users out my way. (And myself of course )
I can't offer much info on the Business side, so I'll offer you my last experience in doing so: Recently I went through the painful process of setting up a BigPond Home Network gateway for a client who wanted to do remote site monitoring of some IP-aware gadget. The process: 1 - Ask the sales guy at t[Life] whether or not the Netcomm box definitely supported DDNS (since they had no Fixed IP plans) 2 - Buy the $300 NetComm magic box. 3 - Return to office, attempt to do the online signup with the NetComm box. 4 - After 5 goes on two different machines, give up and ring 137663. (Modem thought it was connected, but could not ping beyond it's DNS server so could not bring up the signup page. 5 - Spend 30 minutes getting advice on how to put the IMEI and IMSI number into a https signup URL via another ADSL connection. 6 - Get the inevitable cryptic "We need more info" message at the end of the signup because it was a business account. 7 - Spend another 30 mins talking to someone else about why they need more info - they are often puzzled when you call with that error message; later found out that the phone account was not the same business name as the one we signed up with. (Fortunately resolved easily.) It's often not such an obvious reason - the other two I've done similar for other businesses, I have no idea what they wanted. 8 - It works about 15 mins later, once I remember to put the username into the modem. (Rare blond moment.) 9 - Set up DDNS, Port Forwarding, Usage Meter, Password changes and test. He had to use Telstra because his installs were all remote places where Optus could not be trusted. (I did demo it on an Exetel service first to prove it was feasible.) $30 a month is nothing to them however, so I could not argue and understand their point of view. I don't mind doing BigPond installs like this - I make a nice per hour amount for doing nothing but sit on the phone The one challenge I would forsee for you is similar in that you need to counter the business' fear that the coverage won't work for them - hence why I suggest lending them a service to be sure - AFAIK Telstra won't do that Comment (1)
Mike,
We aren't, in any way, abandoning the Country Broadband initiative - I'm disappointed I didn't guard against scumminess....entirely my fault. I have no problem lending our better agents sims/modems and you should talk to Melanie about that. Comments (7)
Hi John,
You don't list coverage as an important item for customers buying business broadband? I'd have thought this would have been right near the top of the list? Also, what exact "scumminess" happened with the country broadband product? I know you've wound back promotion of it but I haven't seen you explain what happened that has made you so unhappy about it (and those parties involved in delivering it). Comment (1)
The vast majority of business usage is in capital cities where all carriers are pretty much similar.
In the country only Telstra and Optus have significant coverage and Optus now claim 97% which, ignoring anecdotal comments, is not going to concern a business decision maker very much. As Exetel will only aim at a small number of business users (1,000) coverage is an irrelevancy. Comments (7)
I hope that when the dust settles you will leave room for small business to order Exetel HSPA. Whether intentional or not, your HSPA "Corporate" and "Business" web pages look pretty much similar and both carry the restriction that a minimum of 10 services must be ordered.
Fair enough, I understand what you are trying to do re large corporates. But it leaves no way for a business to order fewer than 10 HSPA services, regardless of price. I asked about this on the forum, and was told to order residential. But it is impossible to order a business service using the residential order form - there is no provision for anything other than one personal account owner name. Was it intentional to exclude small business from being able to order HSPA ? Comment (1)
Brad,
I am not as fast as I once was in making web changes. I will ensure the business wireless broadband pages are updated next week. Comments (7)
I agree with Brad's comment for the need to allow small business to order a "business" HSPA plan.
As a small business I'm using your residential HSPA plans and would prefer to be able to have a business plan which doesn't have the residential plans: "you have reached $25 excess charges, please pay now or get cut off" message. Comments (4)
I will definitely get the web changes made this week.
Comments (7)
For these plans to be interesting for business use in mobiles (Blackberries, iPhones, etc.) I believe you would need to add some of the benefits of your Corporate Mobile plans (http://www.exetel.com.au/large_mobile_plans.php), like free intra-fleet calls, free calls to office landlines. You will also need to match the call charges of those plans.
Comments (4)
That's a very big ask on a single service.
However if the user is using MoIP with Exetel as the VoIP provider calls between handsets would be at no call charge (but would incur the data cost). If the user also used Exetel VoIP on their land lines then calls to the office (and from the office) would be at no charge. Comments (7)
I don't believe we're there yet with MoIP, I've not been able to get consistent good quality, incoming calls to a VOIP DID registered on the mobile often don't work. I also don't see people remembering to call their colleague on their MoIP DID. This will result in fleet users calling each other on the mobile number and incurring higher cost.
I believe that it would be great to have a single business plan type which could be used by all mobile phone users and HSPA users in the company, so competitive call & data rates on one plan. I don't believe any provider is offering this yet. Comments (4)
I have used MoIP for 18 months and have had no problems.
There is no way for Exetel to make mobile to mobile calls at no charge. Comments (7)
You're already offering free intra fleet & fleet to office calls on the Corporate Mobile per minute plan
This has been an awesome plan for my small business. It just would be nice to combine the HSPA SIMs on the same plan. I understand that won't be possible in the near future, possibly never. Comments (4)
Yes, BUT, our current mobile plans are via Vodafone and, as I've said for the best part of four years, we cannot deliver the same value for money using Optus.
If we change HSPA from Optus to Vodafone then it would be possible - but we would be reluctant to do that for residential users (especially in regional Australia) so it remains, at least currently, a barrier. Comments (7)
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