John Linton
.......we had one of our better weeks - which is always a nice event.
I held great fears for our move from Level 9 to Level 25 in the East Tower of the world trade centre in Colombo but the General Manager assisted by volunteer personnel completed that very complex task (and together with engineers in North Sydney) accomplished the very complex tasks associated with moving 50 people and the communications systems they require to do their jobs without incident and on time. It was a great relief to receive the periodic updates during the day saying it was running smoothly and then the final advice that it was fully accomplished.
On a much smaller scale, but just as important, was the completion by AAPT of a second GiGE back haul that provides connectivity between Exetel customers connected to AAPT's ADSL2 ports and Exetel's PoPs to be increased to the required levels as we have run out of capacity on the current single 1 gbps connection (950 mbps out of 1 gbps - but only 950 mbps is usable) and the second circuit has been a problem to get operational in the originally required time frame. This was mainly our fault as we asked for it to be terminated at our North Sydney offices as part of the relocation of one of our rented co-los in the Sydney CBD to the data centre we built when we purchased the 'new' premises in May last year. We began the process of reducing the racks we rented in one of our co-los some months ago and will gradually move those services to our own premises.
The third key 'success' of the week was to finalise the Telstra and NBN fibre wholesale contracts and complete the internal preparation to offer those services (from Monday May 10th in terms of the Telstra Point Cook fibre trial) as well as finalising the 'marketing to promote those services in the various locations. We completed the pricing for the three different supplier's services and built the pricing on our preferred model of PAYG per gb with the base services provided at the carrier cost plus a small margin plus whatever installation cost the carrier charges from time to time....which in some cases is currently zero as they try to develop early interest in user take up. While I, personally, do not think we will sell many fibre services over the coming months I do think it's an essential preparation for the not too distant future when fibre services are much more widely available.
We also completed the upgrade of the Australian network (all bar one circuit) which was a major project in its way adding 1.8 gbps of IP bandwidth in total to each Australian PoP and also adding back haul to each of the PoPs. We have now doubled the network hardware and link capacity of the network in a twelve month period which was a huge expense to us as well as being a significant topological change for which our small engineering team is to be congratulated for completing without very much inconvenience to our customers.
I suppose the icing on the cake, seeing I started with the Wall Street blood bath, was to watch EFTel's share price sink some 30% to an all time low and, at 1.12 cents, get close to the delisting level. The company is effectively worthless with a growing negative asset backing and huge, for its tiny size, short and longer term debt. I understand it's a petty view, and I seldom if ever take pleasure in the misfortunes of others (having had more than my 'share' myself) but I particularly dislike that company for its past actions and I can't forget them. Obviously the people bailing out of their share holding yesterday know something that caused them to take the actions they did which may become more generally known at some future time.
So a very good week for Exetel and a great relief to me personally. It is a good feeling to start the weekend with.
Copyright © Exetel Pty Ltd 2010
ABN 350 979 865 46