John Linton
Life remains full of surprises and I sometimes wonder if I'm really up to dealing with the way people think and operate in today's Australian technology marketplaces. I commented some time in the not too distant past that there was a more amiable trait in the sorts of marketplaces in which Exetel operates for 'competing' companies to consider more collaborative methods of approaching their business objectives. Exetel has received several approaches from companies whom we would regard as competitors since the start of this calendar year with various 'co-operative' buying proposals covering modems, IP bandwidth, advertizing and even Telstra tail circuits.
Earlier this morning I received a call (again on my mobile - is my mobile number posted on some public forum somewhere?) from a person I have never previously been in contact with who said he was speaking on behalf of a competitor about a subject he believed Exetel could be very interested in. It was quite early in the morning, long before the time that most 'business' calls are made, and the person was very well and politely spoken which made the call unusual in itself - so I listened.
In essence his proposal was that Exetel join with the company on whose behalf he was acting and two other companies, unnamed and about which he provided no details, to open a chain of shop front outlets to sell data over 3G services and ADSL services based on the Apple iPhone and two other devices for which his 'employer' had access to. The basic plan was to provide these services in regional areas of Australia, predominantly in Queensland and NSW in terms of locations but Australia wide with a disproportionate emphasis on Tasmania.
He said he knew that such a proposal would appeal to me because of my long held, and apparently well known, "passion" for country Australia and my previous experiences of setting up 'country' outlets in the past both for Osborne and TPG and in an almost similar way for OneTel. I was surprised at the amount of detailed knowledge he demonstrated about my past working 'life' not because of the generalities but because of the specificities - the towns and cities I had been involved with in the past and even the names and current whereabouts and jobs of more than a few people who I had worked with in these areas.
It's always flattering, even for the most laconic of people, to have someone make a series of admiring comments about you based on actual events and people in your 'past life' and he certainly knew how to do that with a depth of knowledge that was bewildering as I doubt that anyone other than myself knew some of the details that he seemed quite familiar with. I was impressed - but then that was clearly the intention.
The thing that I found almost 'uncanny' was the fact that I had been thinking about the best ways of promoting the HSDPA service and had thought about how it could be used to solve the current Tasmanian back haul issues (that even with access to BassLink are still going to present problems) and had been working on how this could be done with some of Exetel's current regional and country agents. It was almost as though someone had access to my inner thoughts (which I have never expressed even casually to Steve and Annette).
So I am intrigued, not just by the fact that someone else can parallel my own thinking so exactly and know so much about some things about me that are quite personally private, but how quickly and how effectively such a chain of retail outlets could be created; and more importantly how much it would cost. It's also made me aware that, in the event that we did actually seriously consider doing something like this, we may well have a very serious competitor which would make the whole concept much less attractive to both us and, I would assume, any other real competitor. (one of the key reasons I've actually considered this scenario is that it is 'different' and, I thought, a jump ahead of competitors).
So I thanked the 'nice man' for his courtesy in approaching Exetel but said that we would not be interested in such a joint venture though he had presented the merits of combining the strengths of different companies extremely effectively. I said that we were considering something similar and had made no decision as yet and if we ended up actually doing such a thing there might be some opportunities of some sort of collaboration in the future.
So.....interesting.....and a little disconcerting.
I'm actually not sure now whether I was considering such an approach as seriously as I made out in our conversation or whether I'm now more positively influenced to do something because I've been made aware that someone else is seriously (apparently) considering doing the same thing - or at least a very similar thing.
It does seem a sensible possibility to put more effort in to promoting HSDPA services in areas that are not ever likely to get ADSL2 and that, obviously, means regional areas of Australia (and it's also true that I have a deep affection for 'country' Australia). It's also true that Exetel does have over 300 agents in many areas of regional Australia and we have begun talking about Exetel franchises with such a scenario as HSDPA in mind.
Very, very annoying that someone else is thinking exactly the same thing and even more annoying that someone knows enough about Exetel and me personally to be able to exactly understand what we might do and why and even what people we might think of involving - that really p***es me off.
However what really concerns me is that Exetel won't be ready to do anything along these lines now for several months and, unless I completely misunderstood this morning's conversation, that may be getting too late and someone else may well have beaten us to it.
Life must get easier soon.