John Linton As I had more time than usual, courtesy of jet lag, to read the press articles today I came across this fairly innocuous one:
http://www.japantoday.com/category/technology/view/kddis-net-profit-falls-as-revenue-from-voice-calls-drop
The continual falling of PSTN/ISDN voice services in Australia is well publicised and Telstra continues to act accordingly in promoting its other services with special emphasis being given to mobile data services and all mobile companies promoting ever more 'feature laden' (I really sometimes wonder where marketing people are 'educated') 'packages'. Now that the ABS routinely reports that there are more mobile services in use than there are people in Australia you would have to reach the conclusion that in, at least handset terms, the mobile market is saturated. (One of the more incongruous sites in Bangkok last week was the tiny old lady who seems to be a permanent fixture of the bus stop outside the Gem Tower was that she was using a mobile phone as I wandered past).
This brief report seems to indicate that revenue from telephone calls over mobile services reduced in the last reporting period - which is understandable as more and more 'minutes' are being provided at the same or lower prices than previously. Obviously the rapid rise in data use over mobile telephones has more than made up for the reduction in telephone call revenues (some time late last year I referred to a US article saying that data revenue would overtake telephone call revenue for US mobile carriers in 2011). So what happens now? With the Australian residential ADSL market 'saturated' is the potential saturation of the residential mobile market going to have a further impact on the way communications services are provided to residential users?
I don't have the slightest idea having only a minor interest in mobile telephony which, as far as my biased mind is concerned is operated by spivs and con men below the carrier level. What does interest me is the ways that such saturation may affect Exetel this year as we attempt to sell more mobile data and other mobile services as apart of residential ADSL services. I have never used a 'capped' mobile plan and my current Exetel MoIP service that gives me 10 cent untimed local and national calls and very low mobile to mobile rates makes it unlikely that I ever will. However I know I'm in a miniscule minority as long as mobile handsets are "given away" as part of ridiculously over subsidised carrier mobile promotions (which leads to the scenario of mobile resell scams that cost 40 people their jobs over the weekend):
http://www.esperanceexpress.com.au/news/national/national/general/vodafone-dealer-shuts-down-after-expose/2055849.aspx
One of the important objectives we have to put in place before Febrauary 1st is what we have to do with our Optus mobile offerings to make them more appealing that they currently are. Given the slight insight of the referenced article that is obviously going to be more difficult than it already was considered to be. The Optus plans we currently offer have been more successful, in a very minor way, than I thought they'd be but that minor success encouraged us to think how we could do more. I'm now not so sure we will be able to do that but it is worth some effort to see what could be done. For no real reason, other than I have had a very relaxing time over the past ten days, I feel unreasonably optimistic that we might be able to do that.
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