John Linton A truly miserable day in Sydney which provided no inclination to get out of bed at the usual hour. A strange October in weather terms generally - far from the blue skies and balmy breezes that have marked most Octobers in Sydney over the years.
A similarly strange 'business' week with average results in terms of numbers of new orders for our various services but those order volumes containing a much higher ratio of 'big' orders than usual. Several suppliers also demonstrated a 'much keener interest' in doing business with us than in the past which is somewhat surprising and indicates the ongoing troubled nature of the communications marketplaces generally. So, as I alluded to yesterday, there is great uncertainty in the supplier ranks with indications of greater uncertainty in the future. The increase in the number of unsolicited CVs I receive exceeded double figures this week for the first time I can remember (I actually can't remember any time when I have received so many) which is the strongest indication yet of things not going well in our industry. The other strong indication is that even Telstra is slashing its prices for business services to prevent the 'defection' of its customers from the "safety of a Tier One supplier to the dangers of a cut price operator"....now there's a major market place change if ever there was one.
I have often wondered what a "Tier One Supplier" actually is? I know that what it REALLY is - a piece of marketing gobbledigook coined to influence the stupid and the gullible who lack the commonsense to understand the basics of communications technology and spend other people's money rather than understanding how to carry out their duties. I have always extended total respect to other people in the communications industry and have always assumed that anyone who holds a decision making position in selecting communications solutions has at least an equal knowledge to mine in understanding just how the various carriers and suppliers networks actually work and what their relative strengths and weaknesses are. But when the term 'TIER One Supplier" is used it is obvious that the person using it has no idea at all as to what they are talking about when it comes to very basic networking architecture or operations.
It seems that as we enter this new phase of business/corporate selling we have begun to annoy more and more of the suppliers who our young sales people are wining business from and now they regularly achieve sales volumes of more than 100 a month (150 in August) even suppliers such as Telstra are having to change their attitudes. (one can only wonder what will happen if we manage to reach our 2012 target of 400 sales per month). This is hardly a surprise, it was obviously inevitable at some stage, but it does mean we will now have to modify our approach if we are to continue to build this key aspect of our future business. I am thinking, among many other things, of addressing this issue of "being a Tier One supplier" much more directly and would welcome any assistance as to what a network decision maker considers "Tier One" to actually mean and what the perceived values a "Tier One" actually confers because I have been buying communications services for almost twenty years and I am damned if I know a single one.
Let me take the obvious example of IP from Southern Cross which we have bought from Telstra, Optus, Verizon, AAPT and NTT....all "Tier One" suppliers. Is there any difference except price per mbps? Absolutely not. Is one supplier more reliable than the others? Yes. All of those carriers over the last ten years have had problems ranging from a few minutes to more than two days. Does that make them not a "Tier One" supplier? I would think it does on the basis of the "Tier One" description so carelessly bandied about. But what about Exetel? Well, against any criterion/criteria that the "Tier One Bandiers" care to apply - Exetel is superior to each of those communications providers because we have triply redundant IP services sourced from (currently) Optus, Verizon and NTT because we KNOW from long experience that none of those suppliers is able to keep their service to us up 100% of the time....so we have to use three of them simultaneously.
I could ask if the Cisco NTUs provided by a "Tier One" supplier are superior to the Cisco NTUs provided by Exetel or whether the back hauls provided by a "Tier One" supplier to an end user are better than the back hauls provided by a "Tier One" supplier to Exetel that connect an end user but it would be self evident nonsense. Similarly is any end user with a few links going to be treated by any carrier any better than Exetel who has closing on 2,000 links and spends more than a million dollars a month with them? I could go on but you get the point. However, because this marketing con of "Tier One" provider has been allowed to go unchallenged for so long it will take more than common sense to deal with. I would welcome any assistance anyone might be able to provide.
Copyright © Exetel Pty Ltd 2011
ABN 350 979 865 46