John Linton We had an interesting approach yesterday. Airtel, the giant Indian mobile company (larger than Telstra, Optus and Vodafone Australia combined), sent us an RFQ to provide customer sales, support and other associated services for their mobile company in Sri Lanka. This is the second approach of this type in the last week although this is a very large requirement from a very large company. While it is, possibly, too large an opportunity for us to be a front runner for at this stage it is an indication of how far the Sri Lankan company has developed since we began operations there and the reputation for excellence that it has in the Sri Lankan business community; local and ex-pat. The only objective we had in setting up the company in Sri Lanka was to be able to offer the very best support and other services to our customers and, without going over board, the progress made over coming up to five years from the very modest start made all those years ago is very satisfactory. It is possible to believe that the SL company will exceed world's best practice in every aspect of its operations in the foreseeable future.
We continue to work with two other Australian companies on much, much smaller versions of providing 'back office' support for their operations though, understandably, there are significantly different issues to be overcome relating to 'confidentiality' and 'data protection' type issues with Telstra Retail's long reputation of such dealings casting a long shadow over that sort of collaboration. However, subject to some more serious discussions these discussions may result in positive outcomes. We supply ADSL plans to a few, very small, VISPS and, depending on how these other current discussions work out, may extend those services to back office support as an add on service. It's a concept we have considered from time to time over the past 18 months or so but have always concluded, very sensibly, that it's a 'future thing'.
We have got a little closer to making one of the 'joint venture' opportunities we have been discussing a reality with the basics of the, very different from where we started, arrangements pretty much agreed....virtually a standard VISP agreement...and if we/they can produce some acceptable paper work by the end of this week that may start, in a minor way, as early as next Monday. We have based a part of our business on collaborations from day one - though the initial collaboration ended in a total disaster - the collaborations with our agents has been very successful and mutually beneficial with more than a few of our original agents still with us. We will try and build on this program more significantly over the coming months.
So, as we get a little closer to finalising our plans for the coming year, 'collaborations' of various types are beginning to figure more prominently than when we began the process some 5 weeks ago. How the new year will develop is something well beyond my comprehension and I won't begin to make predictions on whether the current heavy discounting will continue - but I wouldn't bet against it. All that means though is that Exetel has to continue to move away from dependence on markets and services that are unprofitable for us.
I did have a couple of other points but the power is about to be switched off (in my home) to allow for some maintenance to something or other so they will have to keep for another day.
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