John Linton I was trying to establish a basis for determining how to properly compare what is going on in the marketplaces in which we operate today with those of one year ago and two years ago - beyond the bleeding obvious of order intakes divided by payroll expenses. Even removing the distortions of increased base revenue and changed product line ups I didn't get anything meaningful with the simplistic approaches I was taking. I don't want to kid myself out of sheer exhaustion that the first few weeks of this new financial year are 'easier' than any of the weeks for the past two plus years but that is the way it is looking to me. Perhaps I am just too tired to register the burdens? For whatever reason things do look brighter than they have done for as long as I can remember and, real or not, that can only be a good thing.
I briefly discussed the progress we have made in processing the NBN applications we have received so far (now closing on 40% of those eligible) with our operations manager yesterday and got the predictable update. Removing the comments on the capabilities of the NBNCo people concerned and the completely broken nature of the cobbled together "B2B" software leaves nothing positive. Exetel, a very small company in terms of the overall communications markets in Australia is very used to the quirkiness and vagaries of the different suppliers B2B software - we have, after all, had to write interfaces to over a dozen different B2B interfaces over the years - all very different - all with functional problems and just plain 'doesn't works'. As I said to Paul - "why expect NBNCo to be any different?" However it does serve to illustrate how completely unprepared NBNCo is to actually accept and deliver services on a purely administrative basis. One can only conjecture on how the systems/processes to report and resolve line faults are.
Our major 'project' for FY2012 is to make a great deal of progress in providing 'pure IP' services to the corporate and government market places around Australia.It takes time (in our case a little over seven years) to build a network that will meet the criteria of large buyers when it comes to key infrastructure services. The Exetel network meets even the most stringent criteria from even the most demanding large buyer and, apart from the fact it provides services to far more end users for many years than any corporate/government user will ever need, the diagrams demonstrate the multiple redundancies and sophisticated back end controls the most sophisticated IT manager could demand. Part of our reason for, after considering it for the past three years, buying some of our IP bandwidth direct from Southern Cross rather than via a Southern Cross reseller is to more directly address the corporate/government IP market.
I don't know just how possible it will be for us to sell 20 or 30 or even 50 gbps of 'pure IP' over the coming 12 to 18 months but, based on our test efforts to date (we have now sold over approaching 20 'pure IP' links with the largest one being 250 mbps and one being 500 mbps if the 'trial' 100 mbps service delivers as expected) it seems more than possible. We have spent a lot of money over a long time frame to build a network capable of doing that and then we have spent an even greater amount of money building a corporate sales force and support group capable of selling at the required levels. We have spent even more money (and are 'lucky' to have incredibly skilled programmers) developing the back end 'control panels' that provide a highly sophisticated view and control over the network connections and interfaces. All that remains is to put in place the pricing that will 'blow away' the horrendously high charges made by current IP providers and on which they have based their forward revenue assumptions.
Piece of cake really - well, as long as you are farseeing and patient enough to put in a lot of money over a lot of years developing the required capabilities.
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PS: What I've been saying for over a year:
http://www.businessspectator.com.au/bs.nsf/Article/jobs-mining-employment-resources-RBA-retail-pd20110804-KDSEM?OpenDocument&src=kgb