Tuesday, May 27. 2008Getting strong now.......won't be long now..John Linton ......with acknowledgment to Bill Conti and Carol Connors. I have been making the 'final' adjustments to the 'design' of the projected HSDPA plans that Exetel will offer from July 1st 2008 (all being well) and have not been very happy with what we can accomplish in the short term. My unease is partly due to the 'me tooism' of offering a service that begins by being constrained by the wholesaler's 'models' and therefore what is already available to end users from the carrier itself and their 'early to market' wholesale customers and, more importantly to me in terms of looking at the whole of FY2009, what I see happening in the USA and to a lesser extent in Europe. I'm taking time off in July to look at some of the wildlife re-introduction and protection programs in the UK - mainly in Scotland and, despite the disapproval of my 'traveling companion' I will make an effort to 'stay in touch' for which I need a sensible broadband connection which, based on the locations we will be visiting, is going to prove difficult unless I can use a wireless service. (However, given the West Coast of Scotland is devoid of HSDPA services that is not going to be as useful as I thought it would be). One benefit of doing this 'research', in looking up various wireless options in Europe, was that I became more fully aware that there were much more flexible HSDPA plans available from European carriers than there are, currently, from Australian mobile carriers. The US carriers are a lot more flexible than Australian carriers. This interests/concerns me to the extent that all previous trends point to the Australian carriers adopting the more successful mobile plans developed by the European carriers with a 3 - 6 month lag. The HSDPA plans I thought were particularly useful were those that charged a monthly access fee and allowed the user to choose an amount of downloads they wanted which could be used on an as and when basis with the ability to buy more downloads on line to keep the service operating. Basically you buy a USB modem for around $A120.00 and select a service which has a monthly cost plus an amount of downloads (different carriers varied, but the range was from 1 gb to 9 gb at a rate roughly equivalent to current Australian mobile carrier's charges but with no monthly cut off). Of course, if you do the math on less than monthly maximum usage, these plans don't work out to be any cheaper than the current crop of Australian plans from Optus, Vodafone and 3 but what they do offer is the chance of being less costly which would, I think, be what a pretty large sector of the Australian marketplaces would prefer. If we can get one final accommodation from our currently preferred Australian carrier, Exetel will offer a single HSDPA plan based on a fixed monthly service charge plus charges for actual usage per month rather than playing with the 'included usage' basis that works well with ADSL but not, in our circumstances, with HSDPA. I've never been comfortable with the sorts of plans that, for instance, DODO has put in place using the Optus network - in fact I'm not comfortable with the whole chicanery of mobile plan marketing in Australia generally which has, of course, now 'spilled over' to data over mobile. Ideally, I would like Exetel to offer one HSDPA plan which would be: Modem - $125.00 (still having trouble with that price point) Monthly service Access Fee - $5.00 Usage charge - 1.5 cents per megabyte No tricks, no smoke and mirrors, no false claims, no 'shocks' - just a simple to understand price for a very useful service. At current carrier pricing it wont suit anyone who uses more than 3 - 4 gbytes a month (which is probably less than 20% of the current ADSL user base) and at around 1.8 mbps downloads it wont suit some ADSL2 users - but they tend to need more than 3 - 4 gbytes per month anyway so that isn't really an issue. Why come up with such a simple offering? It will suit the majority of unit dwellers (no wire line installation costs and monthly rental costs, no 12-24 month contract) It will suit anyone who travels and spends their own money on internet connection. It will suit many corporations who do pay for their employees traveling internet charges It's a better solution than ADSL for most people who use less than 4 gbytes a month (and who pay for a telephone line) ....and there are many more advantages of such a plan that need to be carefully thought through and worded. Having one simple plan also meets Exetel's overall business objectives of 'plain and simple and very low cost'. Exetel remains a 'marketing blonde free environment'. Trackbacks
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I like the proposed plan and hope you can pull it off, pending getting the right deal from whoever you're dealing with of course. Will the modem be compulsory or will it be available as a BYO offer also? There are a lot of capable handsets that something like this could be useful for, laptops now coming with built in 3G modems etc
The modem price is achievable, unless of course you are getting drawn into a carrier bundle as part of a deal, if you have some freedom there you could hit that price point without too much trouble Comments (2)
I think the issue with the modems is that the codes are proprietary and a carrier provided modem is needed at this stage of the implementation.
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However it needs to be done I think you're onto a winner if you can pull it all together, for a minimum charge of $5 a month with PAYG usage I'd signup straight away just to have it as a backup, I know plenty of people still keeping a backup dialup service that would go this way also
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We agree with the concept that a significant number of people will se it as a low cost back up to ADSL availability.
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John, I believe a plan as you propose would suit a lot of people, specialy if one would be able to cap there max download for the month through the self service interface.
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I'm not sure that capping downloads is going to be possible in the early stages of offering this service but it is something that will be considered if it can be done sensibly.
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Would a user be able to put this on the same simcard as an exetel mobile plan?
If so i think you would broaden the appeal of the data plans well beyond the 'adsl1 replacement' market. Those exetel users already with naked dsl might be tempted to also have a cheap mobile browsing plan with exetel. Comment (1)
Ideally that should be possible - it depends on the carrier we finally select.
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I like it, makes for a cheap DR internet connection for those who already have another connection to.
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We will include it with the business ADSL offerings as 'instant' back up.
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What you have crafted will appeal to a lot of people. Will there be a 6 month or something contract for the service or no?
If the town my mum is in has coverage I might move her to it . Comments (3)
At this stage there is planned to be no contract period.
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All mobile carriers that we have been involved with count uploads for the obvious reason that they take up spectrum capacity.
We haven't made a decision yet as to whether we will do that. Comments (10)
If it could be pulled off then it would surely make Exetel's plan a special thing in the market and it would attract heaps of people due to the stigma in regards to upload being counted.
If not making uploads simply free, perhaps charge for whichever (uploads or downloads) is higher to deter people from abusing it. Comments (3)
1) I don't know whether that's going to be possible.
2) meant to be they mythical "98%" 3) We will do that. Comments (10)
I like the proposed plan too.
It would nicely replace my current OPTA plan in my Brisbane unit which expires in Nov 08..... and which is only used infrequently. I also like the idea of bundling it with a mobile phone or voip phone. Regards, Harry. Comment (1)
This is the sort of plan which I have been looking for - an infrequent user plan, similar to a pre-paid but with non-expiring data. As you said, no-one currently offers this.
I know its early days and you are severly limited by the suppliers, but I hope that: 1. the modem will work easily with Ubuntu (tho I suspect it will be Windows only, maybe Mac) 2. your supplier is (or at least will soon be) nationwide rather than capital-metro-only 3. you offer this to non ADSL customers (probably with an appropriate 6-month security bond similar to your mobile phone offering) Unfortunately ADSL/ADSL2 is not a viable option for me currently as I am too far from the nearest Tel$tra exchange, so my only broadband availability is T's cable. Again, at launch you may not offer it to non-ADSL customers, but I hope if things work out that this (assuming I'm correct) is reviewed soon thereafter. Congrats on finlly getting to where you've been trying to get for a LOOONG time. Lesser people would've given up well befor enow. Comment (1)
1) I don't know whether that will be possible yet.
2) Meant to be the "mythical 98%" of the population. 3) We will do that Comments (10)
You don't need to travel to the other side of the world to do this research into various wireless options, have a look more closely at our local region.
Perhaps have a stop off at Singapore before or after going to the EU. Comment (1)
Do you know if GPRS (2G) data will be charged at the same rate as 3G data? From a rural perspective, 2G may be the only (non-Telstra) service available for quite a while yet.
Cheers, Mike. Comment (1)
My understanding is that 3G will be available almost everywhere by the end of 2008.
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