John Linton
Surprisingly, a few sensible people were actually tending to their commercial intrests yesterday and I had a very pleasant chat with one of the mobile carriers with whom Exetel has been trying to build a relationship to allow us to connect to their network via a gateway. He called me to say that our previous discussions were proceeding positively and to make a time later this week to get together with the other party(ies) to see if there was a sensible way forward in providing access to us both/all parties on a shared service for a trial period of twelve months so that we could have the time to build the volumes that would allow each of us seperately to invest in our own dedicated solution.
Sounded very promising and hopefully next Friday we will be in a position to determine the willingness of all parties to proceed and a ball park time frame. I can't see how we can reach the numbers currently being talked about but we can make a contribution in some sort of properly structured joint venture and I haven't made any promises other than to disclose Exetel's current ADSL sign up and retention rates and provided some realistic, in my view, estimates of what we could achieve on a month by month basis using a WiFi/3G service.
The end number, as stated at the moment, of 20,000 new connections a month to make it worthwhile for the carrier to 'allow' a dedicated gateway connection is really going to take an incredibe amount of effort and some, as yet unknown, set of 'out of left field' ideas and marketing approaches to get remotely close to. If Exetel could do a third of that by mid 2009 it would be very surprising based on what we know today - but then, who knows how things will now begin to change?
I suppose I'm flattered that Exetel is considered by at least one major carrier as a company that could make such a target and I'm grateful, if it all turns out, to be given the chance of achieving that incredibly, to me, huge amount of month on month business. I don't know what has to even begin to be done to begin to plan to achieve such numbers in an immature marketplace that will be unbelievably competitive (and that's just based on the 'opening salvoes' we've seen over the past three months - who could possibly hazard a guess at what will be put in place over the coming twelve months).
Twice before in my seemingly endless career in the IT/Communications business I've been able to come up with methods of completely dominating a marketpace in a relatively short space of time and as the person with whom I was talking yesterday cheerfully said; "this will be a piece of cake compared to last time you took on a monopoly and had their MD go to the PM of the day and threaten to close down if the PM didn't "do something about 'them'". That was a long time ago in a marketplace far, far away and at a time when I thought I was immortal - as I quickly reminded him.
first things first - we need to ensure that whatever we commit to will be realistic and will fit with what the other two parties that may be involved in this 'venture' have in mind; and I don't even know the name of the third company that may be involved let alone what their 'go to market' strategies and logistics might be.
I've never planned a marketing strategy that could be constrained by the needs of 'partners' and I think that will be, at the very least, a 'challenge' almost as great as the challenge of whatever the monthly new sign on targets might turn out to be.
Sufficient unto the day......and to anyone silly enough to be reading my meanderings on this Christmas morning..may the rest of this day be merry and peaceful and I hope Santa has brought you your heart's desire on this special day of the year.