John Linton ....far better than July and, with the minor exception of residential ADSL (where total new customers were slightly lower than August last year but revenue from those fewer customers was well up on August 2010) we had record months for new mobile customers, by a very,very long way with a day still to go, and will almost certainly exceed 150 new corporate customers in a single month smashing the old record of 131). So a good all round effort in terms of sales and revenue - a great relief after the struggles of the last few years. I can almost feel the give as the wheel finally becomes free of the mud. I also realise that one month does not a financial year make........but, as Forrest would say - "one less thing to worry about".
Not that having one less thing to worry about reduces the 'worry list' noticeably and there are more than enough quite obvious signs of things that need serious attention if not completely re-thinking in our current business to more than adequately fill any time that may become available for their consideration. One of the more immediate considerations is the annual IP bandwidth 'negotiations'. We received an invitation for Steve and I to attend NTT's global conference on IP and other issues. One of the sessions was headed "How To Deal With The Plunging Price Of IP". We have already advised one of our current IP providers that we will not renew their contract for IP services beyond the current end date and will shortly make it very clear to the other providers what we expect this years contract renewal prices to be. Unfortunately I can' find the time to attend (much as I love Tokyo) but it will be interesting to see what Steve learns from the speakers ad the attendees.
I have always disliked these 'negotiations' and am pleased that I will not be involved in them this year. I am always embarrassed at the lies told by suppliers about the state of IP pricing which is overtly and blatantly contradicted by easily referenceable facts published in many industry reports. So these 'negotiations' start, from the supplier's side, with our account manager and usually his product manager for IP spinning a pack of lies about current market pricing which, when I was acting on behalf of Exetel, would be refuted by me giving them various references to what is on offer from every other supplier but them. There would be some huffing and puffing followed by an ignominous retreat 'to consider what we may be able to do about meeting your price' - on their part. Very occasionally over the past almost eight years a very foolish supplier representative will (presumably at the urging of his management) tell us that we should go and get the pricing we cite from someone else because "that pricing is impossible to provide". On those occasions we have done exactly that and, no, we never 'bluff' about something so serious.
From the limited information that I can find, the largest buyer of IP in today's market in iinet who buys their IP from Telstra - something I found strange but assume it's because of some sort of overall discount from the pricing they pay for other Telstra services. Looking at what we 'know' about the price iinet pays Telstra (and we can't possibly 'know' what their contracted price is) we are looking for a per gbps price of around 50% less for IP in this year's negotiations. My view is that all IP from SX or NTT is the same and with the exception of the TPG/IP1 service which I accept is of lesser calibre there is no justification for paying any more than the SX wholesale cost for the size IP we are contemplating. Perhaps buying direct from SX would save a lot of embarrassment all round....but then NTT do have better Asian routes and are able to provide SX at very close to our target price.
So, I am pleased not to be directly involved in such discussions any more and even more pleased that I can relax today and see what the final sales results for the month are and complete the final internal discussions slightly revising September's targets.
One sleep to go.
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PS: Who said the nanny state syndrome wasn't all pervasive in Australia. Frequent Flyer points on emergency charters?
http://www.smh.com.au/travel/travel-news/rescue-no-certainty-for-tourists-in-trouble-spots-20110830-1jk95.html