Wednesday, May 21. 2008Is It Really Time To "Ditch The Bitch"?........John Linton .........with apologies for plagiarising a memorable line from the beginning of one of Arnie's lesser known movies. Data over 3G appears to be becoming a reality for Exetel...........maybe global warming is responsible for melting the glacial speed of progressing this implementation encountered to date? After almost two years of trying to find a suitable mobile data service and getting absolutely nowhere either in Australia or overseas there appear to be some signs that some sort of HSDPA service will be available from Exetel before the end of the 21st century - all being well of course. We now have the 'luxury' of considering three different services (though the way the Australian market is currently operating there is very little differentiators between the three services we are considering). I am unenthused by the likely final scenarios and even less enthused about the contract conditions that are being sought but I think I'm worn down by the efforts, not to mention the time, it's taken to reach even this point. However, my very firm belief is that HSDPA is the only way to go for 'low end users' of broadband services and as the ADSL wholesale providers continue to make life more and more difficult for small companies like Exetel it's essential that we plan for an ADSL-less future within some not too distant timeframe. None of the options currently available to us allow Exetel to provide the sort of HSDPA services that we believe the Australian marketplace requires but, if we actually do make a decision to proceed with one of the current three options we will be able, just as we were with our initial 'ventures' into VOIP, to set up the procurement, delivery and support processes that will enable us to have some realistic chance of continuing to survive and, hopefully, continue to grow in the Australian communications marketplaces. My view is that there is no medium/long term way to compete with Telstra/Optus in their 'fight to the death' war over selling to the low end ADSL markets they both seem so desperate to obtain by giving away more than each other and my personal view is that they will continue to give away even more in their attempts to retain their wire line call revenues and line rentals. However both Telstra and Optus, in their need to retain wire line rental and wire line call charges, do reveal a major weakness that HSPA ideally exploits. That is, of course, the need to keep charging for a telephone line and high priced telephone calls that they hide away when promoting their 'free' ADSL offers. HSDPA, on the other hand, allows the end customer to ditch the 'bitch' (telephone line cost and the ridiculously high call costs and use VoIP or mobile). Ignoring the huge advantage of no installation costs and the ability to use HSDPA in different places (when you go away for the weekend, when you go on holidays (both in Australia and overseas) you save $20+ a month by not needing a telephone line and no matter which way Telstra tries to get round that issue they have the cost of the wire line monthly rental weighing down their 'give away' offers like the proverbial millstone round their metaphorical marketing necks. So - HSDPA - no wire line telephone rental and no hugely expensive wire line telephone calls if the customer is prepared to use VoIP (which is a no hassle option for most people these days). With speeds now solidly approaching 3 mbps in many areas (against a theoretical 7.2 mbps which is planned to go to mid teens early in 2009) and included data allowances becoming more than usable for lower end users right now with some chance of becoming suitable for medium users in the not too distant future, it is a welcoming thought that might well become reality. Looking at the current 'retail' HSPA offerings from the more aggressive Australian carriers and comparing them to the latest round of 'bundled' giveaways from Telstra and Optus an HSDPA service with VoIP would be less than half the price of the current Telstra/Optus ADSL giveaways with their line rental 'millstone'. Obviously HSDPA won't suit every lower end broadband buyer but, as far as I can see, you can make a very compelling case for it both economically and in its flexibility compared to wire line based services. In fact I would think it would be the easiest 'marketing' job to put forward the advantages of HSDPA over ADSL that I've ever considered. We will spend some time 'negotiating' some required changes to the various contracts and depending on the final outcome of those 'negotiations' Exetel will, hopefully, be in a position to make a decision by the end of this month. I wonder how many times I have said that over the past 18 months?
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From your various posts on the prospect of wireless services it seems you have sometimes struggled to see where Exetel could offer a benefit over what else is available given that some of these providers seem to be selling services to consumers for less than what they want to wholesale for.
If you can crack the VoIP side of the service and get that working and we have a true landline replacement then you will have the missing piece of the puzzle, none of the services that are currently in the market are particularly great for VoIP, I know you have some talented people there, hopefully this is something you guys can sort out given the constraints of reselling someone else's service. Interesting times ahead Comments (2)
I haven't changed my opinion on the limitations of selling someone else's service.
I do believe that we have a really good VoIP service that is something none of the carrier's are willing to provide and that the one or two resellers currently in place also can't provide. I could easily be wrong. There are some other good functions that Exetel provides (such as the SMS and Fax add ons) and some new services we can put in place in the not too distant future. As I said, we have to start somewhere and I've managed to get nowhere for two years so far. Comments (6)
Exetel will not have fully cracked the VoIP side of things until they can offer local DIDs.
It is fine for us to make outgoing calls with a Sydney number but to really be able to ditch my Telstra service I need to have a local DID so my non-VoIP family and friends can call me without making an STD call. I am a People Telecom ADSL and Engin VoIP customer who wants 'desperately' to move to Exetel. Comment (1)
Rick wrote: "If you can crack the VoIP side of the service and get that working and we have a true landline replacement then you will have the missing piece of the puzzle"
Doesn't Virgin offer a service like this already? I believe they even port your home phone number to their HSDPA Voice/Internet service. Comment (1)
Both Optus Retail and Optus/Virgin offer the port of the current number to the Optus HSDPA service.
Neither Vodafone nor # do this at the moment as far as I'm aware. Optus do it as a wire line carrier. Comments (6)
Virgin have a service like this, only the results aren't that good, heaps of complaints from their end users, I would expect that Exetel would actually have a better shot at getting it right as they seem to look at things from an engineering perspective before a marketing perspective, Virgin seem to have done it the other way around
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The ability to migrate an existing landline number to VOIP is essential for my uptake of either naked ADSL or this wireless offer.
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I think that's still in the future for Exetel - the current method we have is not automatable.
Comments (6)
After talking to the other half, I'm not "allowed" to switch to Naked DSL till I can migrate my existing PSTN phone no. to Exetel VOIP. She thinks changing home phone no's is far too much trouble to go to for a few dollars savings by moving to naked DSL.
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We keep looking at how to do that effectively but haven't come up with anything so far.
Maybe we need someone more expert to look at it. Comments (6)
I'd be interested in your experience in VoIP performance over these HSPA services.
There seems to be a lot of negative performance feedback, especially for latency sensitive services like VoIP. I know VoIP has come a long way on fixed-line internet, but can it really be considered a fixed-line replacement when transmitting over the mobile network? I hope it can - but remain unconvinced. Comment (1)
Initial, minor, trials have been OK.
We have yet to widely test it. Comments (6)
Great! Just in time for me when I buy an iPhone in June/July
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John,
1. "allows the end customer to ditch the 'bitch' (telephone line cost and the ridiculously high call costs and use VoIP or mobile)" Are you refering to specific (low end) users when you refer to landline calls being expensive in relation to mobile calls? It's just that I have always thought of mobiles as being expensive to use - although it is possible I am behind the times and neglect to appreciate the value I receive from my mobile plan these days. 2. "I do believe that we have a really good VoIP service that is something none of the carrier's are willing to provide and that the one or two resellers currently in place also can't provide." I do use (err... My wife does use...) Exetel VoIP and it is quite remarkable that it does the exact same thing as our Telstra line at a literal fraction of the price. However, you seem to think (know) something makes the service superior to similar services and I am curious as to what this is? To clarify the context of my question, if someone asked me what makes Exetel VoIP better than XYZ VoIP, I wouldn't know what to tell them. Comment (1)
I was referring to most users of Telstra services paying very high call costs compared to a VoIP service which could be used by almost any user these days.
I think Exetel's VoIP service is as good as or better than all other VoIP services because it uses Tier 1 hand offs from and to our VoIP switch so the majority of the distance your call 'travels' is over standard PSTN infrastructure. VoIP is only used from you to our PoP (and vice versa). Your wife's experience shows that there is virtually no/actually no difference in call quality between Exetel VoIP and Telstra PSTN. Comments (6)
And $0 mimimum spend and $0 monthly fee and free DID
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