John Linton I completed Day Three of the SL review and Annette is 75% through the individual personnel reviews - so pretty much on schedule. We have laid the groundwork to make significant changes to the ways we operate in Colombo - partly because it was past time to make such changes and partly to ensure we are in better 'shape' to double our Sri Lankan staff if all of our plans work out. It is a long way from where we started here as it is in Sydney and the developments over the respective time frames are interesting to now observe in hindsight. It has taken a long time to build what Exetel is today (8 years) but here we are putting in place plans to double the size and scope of the company over the coming 18 months. It's a strange scenario.
Strangely residential ADSL sales continue to run well above 200% above this period last year and show no sign of slackening off - if anything they increase slightly day by day. We have never had a month in our 'history' where sales of any service have more than doubled in any month and I am really interested in what has happened to make this the case in the first two weeks of January. There is no 'geographic' trend that I can see and no 'churn from' trend other than the increase in churns from 'no name' ISPs with churns from Internode only being slightly behind those from TPG and Telstra. Of course, in the grand scheme of things ADSL, these numbers are tiny but they have become significant to us - obviously any 100% plus change in order intakes needs to be understood as we have done nothing to bring it about - if anything the changes we have made over the past month or so should have had a negative impact. (stopping the customer referral schemes, stopping promotional offers). We must try and work out what is happening - sooner rather than later.
Perhaps it's the 'distance' effect of looking over the Indian Ocean from a tropical paradise that is inducing in me a sense of 'well being' that has been absent for a very long time but I feel better about the future than I have since the early months of 2007. It isn't just that so many competitors have disappeared (that tends to worry me more than it does provide any comfort) nor that we seem to have survived Telstra's onslaughts over the past four years and now "win back" more old Exetel customers from Telstra each day than we lose current customers to Telstra. I think it is in large part that all of the 'defensive' actions we have had to take over the past four years have built a far stronger company in terms of both infrastructure deployed and in lowered costs of delivering all of our services. Perhaps it does owe more to few days in the tropics than I realise.
So we will wrap up the remaining aspects of the SL review over the coming hours and then late tonight head back to the airport. We will spend two days in Singapore visiting a bird wetland sanctuary and then head back to Sydney. It has been a 'good' trip this time.
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PS: I am having problems accessing this blog remotely (currently using the Exetel office LAN) so I may not post for the next few days.