John Linton ...means you get to do it all over again, again.
I always like billing day - it gives you a set of unadorned figures that let you know exactly where you are in terms of where you planned to be in that serried spreadsheet row way that, for that moment in time, is 100% accurate and allows for no optimism or misplaced pessimism - just rows and columns of absolute facts. Of course, the non-recurrent revenue figures will only become known day by day as the month progresses but they can be pretty accurately predicted - to within a percent or so of the total monthly revenue. So August is going to be an on or above target month just as July has already been which is very comforting in these difficult times to get two months of the planned twelve 'in' on or slightly above target as they are two of the most difficult months of the year. Growth is down to 12% over Juy/August last year but, given the current state of the residential ADSL market, 12% growth is better than none and it will not be till later in the current financial year that the change in emphasis from residential to business services will make any appreciable difference if in fact those plans work out.
Some time later today I will look at the ADSL2 plans, yet again, and see what, if anything, can be done to slow the loss of customers to the new Telstra ADSL2 plans with their up to $240.00 cash/credit incentives and the ever more hysterical TPG "500gb for $60.00 offers that are beginning to have a little more than a touch of desperation in their 'screaming headlines'. I haven't looked at a 'projection line' on TPG's offers for a while but it must be evident to anyone with some sort of knowledge of buyer demographics that 90% plus of the market has no usage of over 20 gb per month and 70% has no usage over 10 gb per month so there has to be a point where the mega download advertising strategy doesn't really have any appeal....or maybe I'm just too out of touch with the realities of the new ADSL marketplaces?
As far as I can see - and I've been looking at these scenarios for the best part of 15 years, the key determining factor is price - much more important than download amounts which affect far less than 5% of the total market as a real determinant in 'short listing' possible suppliers with 'perceived network quality' and 'perceived quality of service' close behind and far ahead of 'included downloads'. I may well be wrong but everything I read and all statistics I see seem to confirm those views. However TPG's single minded approach to full page screaming advertising indicates a directly contradictory view to that which their published financial results seem to confirm so I will agree that my views must be incorrect....and there is a much larger market for 500 gb type aspiring customers than I have previously thought.
So, not being remotely capable of competing for that 'size' residential customer, it will become necessary for Exetel to aim its services at different demographics in this sunset time for ADSL. The issues then become much more difficult to 'present' and the ways to those markets, whatever they may turn out to be are going to be much more difficult to execute - and quite possibly beyond our modest capabilities which is why we have not planned for any growth in our ADSL business moving forward and are continuing to switch our modest personnel and financial resources to areas where we can provide products and services with significantly obvious differences .....and therefore it was surprising to me that our actual ADSL sales to 'new' customers increased by almost 20% in July over June.....another minor mystery in this 'Apocalyptic ADSL world'.
It's a beautiful sunny Winter's day in Sydney so perhaps all this confusing thinking should be left until Monday.
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