Monday, May 12. 2008Telco Capacity Is Built To Meet Mothers Day Demand........John Linton ....is an old theory Steve reminded me about when Exetel's VoIP line capacity was reached around 1.00 pm yesterday. Up to yesterday our VoIP switches had never exceeded 66% of the line capacity connecting our VoIP services to the PSTN carrier networks in Australia. The closest we had gone in the past was prior to the last big line capacity upgrade during Chinese New Year. Since the beginning of 2008 we have more than trebled the number of VoIP minutes transiting our VoIP switches and that trend is 'steepening' as Exetel ADSL users accelerate their take up of Exetel VoIP services. This has been partly due to the introduction of the free VoIP services included with the 'naked' ADSL plans, partly because of the increasing penetration of the Exetel calling cards but it's mainly due to the take up by 'non-Naked' ADSL customers. This article in today's IT News: http://www.itwire.com/content/view/18157/127/ presents some analysis on the trends of Australian users to 'dump' their use of fixed wire line services in favour of mobile and VoIP alternatives - particularly in the rental market - but it really doesn't say much more than has already been evident for some time to anyone in the telco industry space. It's a clear trend that ADSL users are moving much of their wire line telephone spending to VoIP (over and above the people who select 'Naked' ADSL) and it underscores the rapid, and increasing, take up of HSPA services from all four carriers who offer them. I'm constantly told by the carriers we have contact with that they are in no hurry to provide HSPA via wholesale as they can't keep up with the retail demand since they first made the services available. I can fully understand that view - up to a point (its a 'new' service and they need to get their major distribution channel fully functioning before expanding the methods of distribution) - but still find it a little bizarre that today's carriers seem to have lost sight of the reasons why all major service and equipment 'manufacturers' in every country in the world since 1780 have understood the unbeatable benefits of multiple distribution models - for any business. Having digressed, the issues that now needs to be more directly addressed by Exetel is determining how best to expand the functions and capacities of our current VoIP services which we have grown relatively slowly over the past 2+ years and how we can integrate an HSPA and mobile service in to our main product/service offerings. All this is made very difficult without having an HSPA service defined. It seems clear enough that we should add another VOIP switch both for additional capacity but more importantly for redundancy in terms of both the switchs and the circuits to and from the switches. Easy enough, if expensive to do - but the expense can be more easily justified now as the VoIP business has grown so rapidly and shows every indication of continuing to grow even more rapidly. However, what isn't clear, at least to me, is whether we should add additional switching capacity in Sydney or begin to 'distribute' it to the other PoPs. What also isn't at all clear is when/if we begin to offer an HSPA service and when/if we implement a direct mobile access to a mobile carrier network how we need to do that in terms of both topology and cost-effectiveness. What is clear is that VoIP is becoming a bigger part of our business and taking more resources (both financial and personnel) more rapidly that we had previously planned for. I probably should be embarrassed by having to say that because the signs and trends have been so obvious for so long but, like some trends, they happen over such a long period of time ("VoIP is going to really happen 'next year' since 1995") that when this really is the year people like me tend to still get surprised. I have alreaady forgotten that both my calls from the handset on my office desk and all my calls from my home are via VoIP - I just don't think about it and it now surprises me when people I meet talk about the complexities of setting up VoIP or the lower call quality of VoIP - in 2008 neither of those views is true. Chinese New Year and now Mother's Day have underlined just how much VoIP has become the telephone communication method of choice in Australia in 2008. Trackbacks
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If the AMCA report is correct and there is an 80% awareness but only 20% of the user base had tried VoIP then there is a massive opportunity for growth.
As it stands your offers don't appeal to users outside of your own network, given that you have peaked your services then this is perhaps a good thing as additional capacity would be needed before you could expand things. Even so it still would be an indicator that amongst your own user base you have plenty of opportunity for growth. Not sure how your current system setup is but prioritising VoIP traffic over all other for your users would be a good way to entice users to use the service, likewise for DSL customers having an ISP that prioritised voice traffic would be an appealing feature that could bring customers that have ISPs that don't work particularly well for VoIP applications A side note, any chance of making your links to articles hyperlinks instead of having to copy and paste? Comments (4)
There is no need to prioritise VoIP traffic as we don't transit VoIP over any 'shared' link - it goes from the Telstra/Optus links (over which we exercise no control) via its own dedicated link to the PSTN handoff and vice versa.
Our VoIP fferings actually seem to appeal to a some non-Exetel users based on the number of enquiries we get for them but, for fraud/payment reasons, we only offer them to Exetel customers who "we know where they live". The Mother's Day peak (which was only for a minute or so) was part of a learning exercise for us as our policy has been, as with IP and ingress/egress, to increase line capacity each time we reach 75% utilisation. I use 'text mode' to write this BLOG as it's clean and easy and it doesn't 'lose' its formatting. I'll see if I can use WSIWYG that includes allowing the creation of hyper links. Comments (6)
I would be interested to see how your VoIP quality compares to others, there is no casual user type option as you say without a bond unless there is another service (I tried getting 2+ with you a while back but unfortunately my exchange is out of ports) so not an option right now. Most of the connections I look after are Exetel services, mine is perhaps the only one left that isn't but only because I'm on an old plan that's cheap, if the plan is withdrawn I'll be over in a shot though and might be able to give it a go then
Comments (4)
There is no 'trial' ability.
You, as a 'no name' residential customer, use the same service that Exetel uses to run it's business and I, as a 'senior' Exetel employee uses at home. If you think that I or I on behalf of Exetel would use service that wasn't completely acceptable then don't bother to sign up. Comments (6)
I'm quite sure that your voice service would work well within your own network, just saying that as I don't currently have an Exetel service paying a $300 bond is something I wouldn't try when it may not be the same result while using my ISP, I've been a VoIP user for a few years and the results can vary depending on VoIP and ISP providers, some combinations don't work too well, not something an end user can know why or whether it is the ISP or VSP causing the problem but a consideration nonetheless.
That said if and when I do churn I would give it a go as I'm sure many of your customers are now doing, I would like to give the same ISP and VSP a go to see how things compare, to date I haven't had a chance to use a setup like this though as the ISP's I've been with haven't had a decent offer for VoIP so I've stuck with external VSP's thus far For the record I was involved in the original VoIP trial with Swiftel so did have the same ISP and VSP for a time however this was quite early in the consumer VoIP market and perhaps not a fair comparison to what it might be like today. Comments (4)
Right now we have no ability to let non Exetelusers trial/use our service.
As I said, fraud is our main consideration. Comments (6)
I totally understand your imposed limitations on the service within your own user base, I had hoped to get the naked 2+ service that included the service, seemed to be an ideal solution, wasn't to be unfortunately.
Would still want to try it even on an ADSL1 service once I eventually change over Comments (4)
As an anecdote, three distinct things came together to make 2007 the year of VoIP in our household.
Firstly, the VSP we chose (MyNetFone) had a special offer and were basically giving away equipment and bundled calls. I can't say if this is a good or bad strategy for MNF. According to their ASX announcements they continue to report strong linear growth in subscriber numbers (and probably exponential growth in calls). On the other hand they're still running at a loss (as of the last report I read). But regardless, the total $50 setup cost represented (to me) very little risk and that small investment has long since paid for itself in savings (especially on STD calls). Secondly, the equipment really was quite easy to set up (I was initially worried about wasting a weekend with wires and configuration pages). Pretty much plug and play. And since then it hasn't skipped a beat (apart from a little bit of downtime here and there). Almost as reliable as the POTS. And finally, and CRITICALLY, my VoIP adventure met with a strong "Wife Acceptance Factor" right from the get go. My wife does ALL the talking in our household To her the "Internet Phone" is as reliable and offers the same voice quality as the old phone (which we still use to receive calls). We don't even think about it now. It's just a service "that's there", like plumbing. So, low setup costs, ease of use, reliability and good voice quality are the key ingredients to a successful VoIP service, from the humble viewpoint of this consumer anyway. Comments (2)
Oh, and as an aside, can I just say that this is one of the most interesting blogs that I've ever stumbled across. It's now on my daily must read list. Keep up the good work!
Comments (2)
Can you clarify the issue of fraud John?
is it merely the credit card that payments are made with (and that accounts could be topped up from a stolen card) - or the fear of accounts being run up that never get paid (which could be solved presumably by pre-paying) call credits? Comment (1)
When we first started offering VoIP to the general public we would get people signing up on a Friday using a stolen credit card and then running up hundreds of dollars of calls.
Even though we took a pre-payment the card was subsequently found to be stolen. Comments (6)
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