Wednesday, September 1. 2010A Lone 'Sun Beam' Sheds Light And Warmth.......John Linton ......albeit briefly, in the increasingly Stygian darkness of the Australian residential ADSL marketplaces. It's the 1st of the month so its recurrent billing day at Exetel. This month's recurrent billing is a new record and has increased by just on 2% from August which, in these very difficult times, is a very good result and a little higher than we predicted (I would be very happy with that sort of increase every month in this financial year). It was interesting to see that our ADSL service revenue increased as did our number of ADSL customers although our plan was for both ADSL customer numbers and revenue to have fallen given everything that is going on in the residential marketplaces. Corporate services, mobile, VoIP, SMS and FAX all increased in line with predictions. So it was very pleasant to review those figures over 'breakfast' - it always makes for a really good start to the day. While a good month is always really pleasing there is no doubt that every month of this calendar year since February has been a real battle and, without being pointlessly pessimistic, I see the coming months as being even more difficult in a wide variety of ways as well as ways that are not possible to foresee. I think the next round of Telstra promotions and the 'flow ons' from them will happen in October and will accelerate between then and Christmas and that can only make what is already a difficult set of residential marketplaces - even more difficult. The introduction of Telstra ADSL2 plans in early August certainly slowed the churn away to Telstra (and Telstra resellers) but that is likely to be a once off 'blip' - assuming Telstra 'further improve' their retail 'win back' programs. We continue to fail to find a sensible way of offering wireless broadband services no matter how much time and effort we put into it. After almost three years I am about ready to give up on making any further efforts as it is simply not producing any worthwhile results....at least as far as residential services are concerned. We have a new 'offer' from Optus and have a better offer from another provider but neither address the requirements of the residential markets we perceive and it is just too much effort for very little if any return. We might just have to concede that we are not the right company type to offer wire line broadband services in any sort of sensible, to a carrier supplier, quantities. We are beginning to make some encouraging progress in business VoIP services and our new 'hosted PABX' product has made an auspicious debut with the first customers all reporting high levels of happiness with the first installations. Again, business and corporate VoIP is making faster progress than residential VoIP and with far less 'support' issues (it makes a very big difference when Exetel or a corporate IT department configures and installs the hardware to a residential customer doing their own install and refusing to read the instruction supplied by Exetel or their hardware manual). It's early days but business/corporate VoIP is something we have very high hopes for as we have a set of highly differentiated products and will build even further on the current base. August also saw another two large corporate customers sign up for quite complex and large solutions from Exetel. The average 'value' of corporate sales keeps increasing month on month and the complexity of the services being supplied also increases. We are making slow progress with our IP only offers but the first three of those have now been sold and the initial customer (who gave us the idea) has upgraded his initial service. We also reached the first of the revenue benchmarks set for corporate sales last month which while being three months 'late' was a pretty impressive achievement for a 'bunch of silly young girls' (as our corporate sales force was disparagingly described by a competitor to one of our suppliers earlier this week). So - all is well with the world, albeit briefly. 30 days of unremitting 'toil' now have to be put in to ensure we make the September targets. Copyright © Exetel Pty Ltd 2010
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I imagine you'd prefer Bevan Slattery's NBN 3.0 over either the Coalition or Labour's annouced plans, maybe a blog post for tomorrow?
http://delimiter.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/AAB_Final2.pdf Comment (1)
It seems to simply re-state what I originally said almost 3 years ago (and many times since).
It isn't anything new nor is it anything that isn't blatantly obvious. Comments (2)
I think that the only reason that JL is not on the NBN3.0 Slattery version is that Eftel is on there.
Certainly the political alliances are there, if nothing more. The whole so called "coalition for affordable broadband" are clearly looking at lining their own pockets with their existing networks being less threatened. It's just like the parliamentary commissions that come up with false results to please one side of politics. What a farce they are. Comment (1)
John,
Having you seriously thought of why you fail to find an all-in-one solution for the wireless home broadband? 3 years in this day and age of communication? Perhaps this is a clear indication that the market is not there and you are wasting your time. We can easily find a large variaty of ADSL products with the combinations of modem, ethernet (100M/1G), wireless G/N, VOIP, printer server, storage server, covering all price brackets. But why there is no cheap solution just to add a HSPA component? It is not so difficult or expensive for manuafactureres to add it, but they simply choose not to. Why? The market is not there. AFAIK there is only one provider that uses wireless as a fixed home solution. Virgin. Do you know who's using it? Only those behind RIM or can't get ADSL. Then take a look at their performance and user feedback... People want wireless but mostly only for mobility applications, not for a fixed home solution to share all home computers. The reliability, price and download quota is still no match of ADSL. You and Baven appears to be a great wireless advocator (and to some extent due to political preferences simply because Labor wants FTTH. I have yet to see you put out a single bad word for Liberal in this blog, yet heaps and heaps of personal attacks for the other party, but that's off topic), however both of you fail to realize wireless is still not a replacement for wired, perhaps forever. Wireless advocators love to reach the conclusion (or gives the hint) that since wireless has so much grow, there must be equal number of ADSL being ditched. Hardly true. The mojority of the growth comes from addtion, not substitution. Comments (2)
Tony, HSPA will be the lowest cost option for a percentage of the marketplace.
You mention those who want mobility, and those behind RIMS. The over 60s are another large section who could embrace it. No kids and probably only 1 computer - with less than 1 GB per month of downloads. .... and no need to keep a $30 per month telephone line! JL has mentioned on numerous occasions that a large proportion of his ADSL1 user base use less than 1 GB per month. I imagine these are the people he is targeting. "Horses for courses". Harry. Comment (1)
Wireless Broadband and VoIP are not a guaranteed success. I suspect the reason you still can't find a Magic Box is because the manufacturers don't want to take the risk of making a product that won't perform the way the user wants in many cases.
I have some very few customers happily using the 7404VGPX as landline replacements - they have ideal reception and the phone normally works. However, it only takes one hill, or a change in the weather, for VoIP over HSPA to become problematic. If you built 'magic box' and then sold it to someone, there's a 50% (estimate) chance that it won't work adequately for VoIP. However, build a magic box that does GSM calls you have a much better chance of it working - which is why there are a few magic boxes that do just this. And with the move away from landlines combined with the 10c/min or less rates available for normal mobile to mobile calls now, I think the time for an integrated VoIP HSPA magic box might have passed. Supporting such a thing could be an administrative (support) nightmare. Comments (2)
I have to agree with you on this. Central Coast is not in the sticks, but living here I find wireless not upto scratch for VOIP is more locations than not. Reception is ok in alot of places, just not great. More towers could fix this issue, but that is an investment that, whilst what we currently have is 'good enough' for most, will not happen.
Sadly, HSPA being a letdown in this area, and I compared it to Sydney where it was good (Hell, it was awesome compared to here), means that I am not able to MOIP like I wanted to and save $$ Comment (1)
Do you really think that today = the future in terms of coverage?
Comments (2)
In my area, yes. Very spread out rural community with lots of hills; we're unlikely to see a significant improvement outside the main towns because of the geography.
Comments (2)
[Do you really think that today = the future in terms of coverage? ]
But you also appear to think today's usage pattern (mostly Comments (2)
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