John Linton
I scan read the iinet results on the ASX yesterday:
http://www.asx.com.au/asxpdf/20100222/pdf/31ntpcrp20fstq.pdf
which were issued with the usual misdirection but one thing was clear - iinet's ADSL growth has slowed to virtually nothing along with Telstra's and Optus previous announcements. This is based on the statement in their ASX report that says that they achieved 22,300 net new ADSL customers in the sixth month period ending 31st December 2010 which means that Exetel contributed more than 10% of iinet's growth via our purchases of ADSL2 through AAPT (and presumably AAPT's own orders plus those of their other wholesale customers contributed much more than that) so actual retail growth of iinet's 'retail' ADSL2 business can be presumed to be virtually nothing. Contributing to a 'competitor's "growth" is something I will have to look into. iinet make no mention of any amounts of wholesale ADSL2 customers. Because the graphs depicting the "off net" are not quite clear (in terms of 'Westnet' acquisitions/movements) it's hard to work out what is happening with the 'absorbtion' of that company but it's probably past the time it really matters.
Any way - nothing to see here - move along. It will be interesting to see TPG's results when they get released next month plus the ABS figures on March 30th to complete the picture of the 'current' state of the ADSL marketplace.....right now "flattish" looks as though its an optimistic assessment.
I noticed the first, pretty feeble I thought, attempts by Telstra to 'lower' their HSPA prices by giving a 1 gB 'sign up bonus' on their pre-paid plans. Sometimes I wish I had the 'marketing dollars' that larger companies have to attract new customers with 'give aways' rather than having to rely on the least cost of service over a reasonable period of use. These sign on down load bonuses are the most cynical piece of rip off the customer flim flam yet to be used by the carriers and their resellers. How can something free be a rip off? Because it encourages the customer to down load more than they usually would thus setting a pattern for over use in the future.
I also read the brief announcement that David Spence had been 'dispensed' with as Unwired's CEO and guiding light after 6 years of trying to get WiMax off the ground in Australia. As either the first or second wholesale customer which in the two years before we stopped selling new services became by far the biggest Unwired wholesale customer (and still with a few hundred of our once many thousands of Unwired network customers) I was sorry to see that attempt at introducing WiMax as a major wireless alternative into Australia fail so badly and fritter away some many hundreds of millions of dollars. I suppose it was unintentionally ironic that in the same paper that Kerry Stokes was merging Channel 7 (which owns Unwired and Engin) into his heavy machinery business - not, I would have thought a move that shows confidence in the future of communications by Mr Stokes. Another minor indicator that the 'consolidation' of the suppliers of residential communications services continues to occur.
The rest of the communications media yesterday remained as bland as the previous week with nothing indicating any serious, or even semi-serious, decisions being made by any company. Perhaps the combination of the hiatus introduced by the 'NBN2' ramifications and the 'death' of the ADSL market places has produced a state of 'innovation' exhaustion over communications land? Maybe I'm reading the wrong media but it seems that there is less 'novelty' in the business than at any time I have been associated with it. I re-examined the AAPT unlimited offer to see if I could determine what was going to affect Exetel and came to the conclusion that, generally, it is a good situation for us as a residential ISP. Looking at the usage profiles of the Exetel customers that have churned to AAPT since the introduction of the original off peak unlimited AAPT plans the usage profile of customers who churned to AAPT (and there were surprisingly few) all, but 2, were very heavy off peak down loaders and the first few who have churned since the announcement were very heavy down loaders in both off peak and peak. If that becomes true for all ISPs then AAPT will have an interesting few months....but as I flippantly remarked to a colleague yesterday when we discussed these figures "Unlimited down loads are like unlimited petrol for $100.00 - there are only so many miles the majority will drive in a month irrespective of whether the petrol price is zero after their first 1,000 kms".
Maybe I'll regain my inspiration soon.
PS: One more example of Krudd's dishonesty/duplicity/inability to actually do anything at all:
http://blogs.theage.com.au/triage/archives/2010/02/yourhealthbodgyrushedgovau.html