John Linton We have been trying to find ways of making wireless broadband more 'usable' (affordable) for quite some time. Unless, in the light of ongoing 'discoveries' about how under provisioning/over subscribing is becoming endemic in the supply of both ADSL and wireless services, leads us to the dark side we have to persuade our current or some other wireless broadband provider to provide wireless services on a different basis to the simple pfwyu basis they do today. I was interested in comparing the usage graph in this article:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703652104576122030887519022.html?mod=WSJ_Tech_LEFTTopNews
(towards the end of the page) with the live usage graph we publish on our web side for prospective users of our Optus supplied wireless service:
http://www.exetel.com.au/residential-hspa-pricing.php
As you can see they are quite different to each other and quite different to our own residential ADSL graphs. Of course our publicly displayed graphs are for the last 24 hours, not an aggregate of the past six months so such a comparison is not specific but looking back over the past month the pattern doesn't change that much. My, relatively informed, guess is that the majority of Exetel's wireless customers use our wireless services as an ADSL replacement or supplement via a PC or laptop and the majority of Verizon's users use their service via a mobile telephone. While these differences probably should not be compared if only because of the huge difference in the size of the user bases they did 'trigger' a slightly new thought process in what remains of my mind.
At the moment the carriers and their resellers offer very attractive pricing for wireless services that is beyond the ability of Exetel to compete with - on price. All the tests that we and our customers and prospective customers have run show that Exetel's Optus network wireless service is faster and more reliable than the Optus services sold through both Optus themselves and Optus/Virgin or other Optus re-sellers/wireless network users. However the majority of buyers of these services are not capable of making such a test (nor should they be expected to) so having that advantage of honesty and ethics is not an advantage at all and we tend to get the overwhelming majority of our business from people moving from other Optus network suppliers. I have thought about this ever since I confirmed that other Optus network providers were deliberately under provisioning their wireless back hauls and the chorus of user criticisms of 'tower density' was a lie that covered up, albeit very crudely, the real reason.
(I have had to take a break to untangle a sulphur crested cockatoo from the net in our garden in which he had managed to get his/her neck and right foot entangled and which was slowly strangling him/her as he frantically tried to free him/herself. With Annette's help and a that of a sharp pair of scissors, under the interested gaze of around 20 fellow cockatoos attracted by the frantic screeching, we eventually freed him/her but not before I got a deep laceration from his/her very sharp and very large beak between the joints of my right index finger which makes it awkward and painful to type at the moment).
We need to develop a much more attractive wireless broadband offering, without resorting to the dishonesty that is the necessary under pinning of so many competitive offerings we have tested, or had tested for us, to offer our current residential customers and also our small business customers. How that can be done needs some assistance from Optus and, probably more importantly, a new approach to support and 'advice and guidance' from our Sri Lankan sales and support personnel. Like everything else in these difficult times - major expenditures of effort and many changes are needed just to stand still. I wonder how a 'non-premium' version of wireless broadband would go?
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