John Linton
We drove to the heart of the Derbyshire Dales today and head off to the wilder wilderness of the upper peaks tomorrow. We visited a 'hidden away' stone circle called the nine ladies which was relatively close to our hotel but incredibly difficult to find - I actually don't know how anyone without the patience and determination we displayed would ever find it. However it was the smallest of the circles I have ever seen but pristinely beautiful in an amazing setting. Annette says that I have a strange fascination with stone circles which I suppose is true as over the years I have dragged her to some of the remoter areas of the British Isles to see them.
I really love the dales - almost as much as the West Country and am always so happy to visit this beautiful place again. The views are staggeringly beautiful round every twist and turn in the rods (which believe me have an amazing amount of twists and turns in them). The always changing mixture of rugged tors, moorland, small grey stoned villages and the variable colours of the farmland (bright yellow, yellow gold, light green, dark green and russet brown make a spectacular display for even my hardened mind and I really love spending time here way deep in the remoter parts of the tors.
So, back to another comfortable lounge bar (as wifi doesn't work in our room) with an 18 year old Macallan (which the bar man told me had won best single malt in the world in 2004 and again in 2008 at the "whisky Olympics". It is still amazingly hot in the UK and no rain so a refreshing draft when returning from a hard day slogging up hill and down dale is appreciated. Annette finished her Pimms (tastes completely different in England she assures me) and went to watch the tennis with the barman reminding her there was no need to watch the cricket.
I have been reading the Australian media with the decreasing interest that a second week of a holiday always brings. I keep trying to find some way of providing wireless broadband services to some segments of the residential market places that are not well served by the saturation advertising of Telstra, Optus and their resellers but continue to fail to find anything that seems remotely sensible. I had another hour or so of looking through the UK offers but drew no inspiration from what I read in the various web sites and a couple of magazines I picked up yesterday.
The option for new ADSL customers to add a wireless service has been relatively successful so far with some many hundreds of applications selecting this option over the three weeks it has been offered with the increase from the first week to the third week showing a doubling of interest. Depending on what happens over the coming weeks this should prove to be a sensible way of increasing the number of wireless broadband sign ups to an additional 1,000 or so per month for residential new ADSL users. Business sign ups are beginning to show some good signs of increasing growth with some very, very large corporate users showing more than casual interest in the offerings we can provide to corporate users. But we need something much more than those two promising initiatives. What that could be continues to escape me.
One of the things sent to me from the PC press by Steve was this:
http://www.pcworld.idg.com.au/article/351342/10_50_unbundled_adsl2_plans_compared/
I found it ironic that after we had been 'accused' by so many different types of people about our "destruction of the value we offered" that such a magazine has rated our ADSL2 plans so highly. Of course our ADSL1 plans (which TPG don't offer) are more appealing than the ADSL2 plans. Personally, I don't see how this magazine could reach the conclusions that it did but it probably is representative of how one portion of the market evaluates service offerings. I have seen a continuing upward trend in new/churn ADSL applications since we changed our focus which is heartening and articles such as this will only help that process.
I haven't seen the final figures but it seems likely that Exetel's customers will send over 1,000,000 SMS over DSL in June which, while meaningless in any wider context, is a vindication of our decision to write more of our own software 'features' to integrate in to our ADSL and wireless broadband offerings. Our target by the end of FY2011 is to be sending over 5,000,000 SMS per month which while it looks challenging is not as aggressive as it sounds. We now have a hardware and software 'platform' that is highly reliable and a programming capability that can continue to enhance this service at end user prices that none of our competitors seem to be able to get close to.
This hotel has a restaurant that has four AA rosettes and a Michelin star so I am going to stop now and go and build up an appetite.
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