John Linton ......ever so slowly but it definitely appears to be no longer receding.
We introduced the second of a series of changes to our ADSL services late on Friday with 500 gb options for both Optus and AAPT based plans. We introduced a low end 20 gb option for both of those carriers towards the end of the previous week. Both of these 'innovations have seen immediate 'take up' and we will try and evaluate just what 'impact' the are having over the balance of November despite the fact that 'buying patterns' change quite considerably at this time of year.
In terms of competitive actions we have noticed that very few Exetel customers move away to TPG these days while a much, much larger number of TPG ADSL residential customers churn to Exetel. Similarly significantly fewer Exetel customers succumb to Telstra Retail's blandishments while more Telstra customers than in the past two years 'return' to Exetel as their long contracts expire.....perhaps proving that Telstra aren't prepared to offer the same financial inducements to retain their customers as they were to 'win them back' two years ago.
For these and other reasons we are seeing the 'tide' change from ebb to flow in terms of residential ADSL business though it is still pretty much at the mid point at the moment. So we have been looking at ways that we can speed the 'flow' aspect of the tide having endured a very long ebb period. One of the reasons for a better ADSL performance has been the, very slow, increase in business ADSL services that are beginning to have an overall impact on total numbers - still very small but growing month on month. Perhaps it is the very positive take up of mobile telephone services and a noticeable, still very modest, take up of telephone line services by customers who previously only had ADSL - both those changes would definitely account for the significantly less 'churn aways' though I doubt they would play any part in attracting new customers.
Following the modest successes of the new low end plans and now the possible success of the high end plans we will continue to look at what can be done in the 'mid range'. Optus are being quite aggressive in their attempts to turnaround their own 'ebb tide' and the continual fall in IP costs presents a very different scenario for Exetel than has existed over the past three years. How Optus deals in its 'retail' ADSL business with the challenges it has seemed to ignore for the past three years is something I am not privy to....but all the on the public record signs are that they will try much harder in the coming months than they have to date. Similarly I would expect Telstra Retail to re-work their 'win back/welcome home' campaigns in the immediate future as, from our tiny perspective, the current ones appear to have run out of steam. I doubt that companies such as iinet or Internode will do very much as both those models seem to have reached the limits of their 'natural' reach and they will find things much, much tougher over the coming months.
Perhaps NBNCo will actually roll out some significant infrastructure from now onwards (though the ongoing delays of their agreement with Telstra indicates that might not be the case) and that will also cause the kaleidoscope to turn producing a bewildering array of new 'patterns'. It will be interesting to see just how much money, and capabilities, the major (and minor) providers have left to continue the ADSL war of attrition into a fourth, even more exhausting, year.
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