John Linton
I have been interested in the trending up of ADSL2 applications compared to ADSL1 applications from new and 'churn' users over the past three months. Obviously this has been assisted by the Optus promotion of free activation compared to their very, very high "standard" costs.
It looks like ADSL2 applications will exceed ADSL1 applications for the first time this week and that trend is likely to continue for as long as Exetel continue to offer no cost activation. This surprises me because of the relatively few exchanges available to provide ADSL2 compared to ADSL1 (less than 300 for ADSL2 compared to more than 5,500 for ADSL1).
I think it also reflects the plethora of "free" ADSL1 deals being thrown at the ADSL1 buyer from both Telstra and Optus and also from a number of other ISPs. I'd love to know how to make the economics of such deals work but, no matter how I try and twist the numbers, every "free" deal I come up with shows a loss; no matter how I manipulate the time on contract assumptions.
It's also been interesting to see that the number of ADSL1 8192/384 and 1500/256 applications continues to exceed the 512/128 speed services by an increasing margin each month since the start of this year. This is in stark contrast to the previous three years when 512/128 services regularly exceeded 70% of total services.
I suppose all of this is just another reminder that no, highly competitive, 'technology' market remains the same for more than a few months.
I must find something new/different to offer to increase Exetel's share of people who already have ADSL churning to Exetel rather than to other ISPs - for current ADSL users, presumably, a free churn will offset free installation and a free modem offer from Telstra or Optus etc will have little appeal as they will almost certainly already have a better specified device.