John Linton
......with acknowledgment to Bill Conti and Carol Connors.
I have been making the 'final' adjustments to the 'design' of the projected HSDPA plans that Exetel will offer from July 1st 2008 (all being well) and have not been very happy with what we can accomplish in the short term. My unease is partly due to the 'me tooism' of offering a service that begins by being constrained by the wholesaler's 'models' and therefore what is already available to end users from the carrier itself and their 'early to market' wholesale customers and, more importantly to me in terms of looking at the whole of FY2009, what I see happening in the USA and to a lesser extent in Europe.
I'm taking time off in July to look at some of the wildlife re-introduction and protection programs in the UK - mainly in Scotland and, despite the disapproval of my 'traveling companion' I will make an effort to 'stay in touch' for which I need a sensible broadband connection which, based on the locations we will be visiting, is going to prove difficult unless I can use a wireless service. (However, given the West Coast of Scotland is devoid of HSDPA services that is not going to be as useful as I thought it would be).
One benefit of doing this 'research', in looking up various wireless options in Europe, was that I became more fully aware that there were much more flexible HSDPA plans available from European carriers than there are, currently, from Australian mobile carriers. The US carriers are a lot more flexible than Australian carriers. This interests/concerns me to the extent that all previous trends point to the Australian carriers adopting the more successful mobile plans developed by the European carriers with a 3 - 6 month lag.
The HSDPA plans I thought were particularly useful were those that charged a monthly access fee and allowed the user to choose an amount of downloads they wanted which could be used on an as and when basis with the ability to buy more downloads on line to keep the service operating. Basically you buy a USB modem for around $A120.00 and select a service which has a monthly cost plus an amount of downloads (different carriers varied, but the range was from 1 gb to 9 gb at a rate roughly equivalent to current Australian mobile carrier's charges but with no monthly cut off).
Of course, if you do the math on less than monthly maximum usage, these plans don't work out to be any cheaper than the current crop of Australian plans from Optus, Vodafone and 3 but what they do offer is the chance of being less costly which would, I think, be what a pretty large sector of the Australian marketplaces would prefer.
If we can get one final accommodation from our currently preferred Australian carrier, Exetel will offer a single HSDPA plan based on a fixed monthly service charge plus charges for actual usage per month rather than playing with the 'included usage' basis that works well with ADSL but not, in our circumstances, with HSDPA. I've never been comfortable with the sorts of plans that, for instance, DODO has put in place using the Optus network - in fact I'm not comfortable with the whole chicanery of mobile plan marketing in Australia generally which has, of course, now 'spilled over' to data over mobile.
Ideally, I would like Exetel to offer one HSDPA plan which would be:
Modem - $125.00 (still having trouble with that price point)
Monthly service Access Fee - $5.00
Usage charge - 1.5 cents per megabyte
No tricks, no smoke and mirrors, no false claims, no 'shocks' - just a simple to understand price for a very useful service.
At current carrier pricing it wont suit anyone who uses more than 3 - 4 gbytes a month (which is probably less than 20% of the current ADSL user base) and at around 1.8 mbps downloads it wont suit some ADSL2 users - but they tend to need more than 3 - 4 gbytes per month anyway so that isn't really an issue.
Why come up with such a simple offering?
It will suit the majority of unit dwellers (no wire line installation costs and monthly rental costs, no 12-24 month contract)
It will suit anyone who travels and spends their own money on internet connection.
It will suit many corporations who do pay for their employees traveling internet charges
It's a better solution than ADSL for most people who use less than 4 gbytes a month (and who pay for a telephone line)
....and there are many more advantages of such a plan that need to be carefully thought through and worded.
Having one simple plan also meets Exetel's overall business objectives of 'plain and simple and very low cost'.
Exetel remains a 'marketing blonde free environment'.