John Linton
...which means that hotels charge $A30.00 a day for fairly slow speed internet but HSPA works at around 512 kbps.
We drove from the far North highlands to just outside Perth (Perthshire) today only stopping to look at the Culloden battlefield and take a brief afternoon tea break before arriving at our hotel. Had a bit of trouble finding it as the vilage it's in is not listed on the A - Z so had to resort to instructions from the Swedish receptionist who seemed to be as lost as I was but we eventually made it. Lovely surroundings, heavily wooded grounds and a view of the river from our room and reasonable speed internet if you wanted to pay for it.
I caught up on my email, which I hadn't been able to access for three days, and had a look at what's happening in Australian comms (and also checked the AFL scores from the weekend - nice last quarter). I see that Three has begun to offer 6 gb of downloads for $A39.00 a month on a 24 month contract which is quite something and is better than Three offer in the UK (or in France from what I can see and assuming Orange is Three.)
From what I know of HSPA and mobile data network pricing the offer of 6 gb for $A6.66 a gb is going to lose Three a huge amount of money over the next year assuming that the people who sign up for the service use more than 2 gb of down/up loads a month. It will lose even more money with the give away of the 'dongle' - however that's always been the way the mobile carriers have operated so it is not surprising. Three's coverage remains the major problem for them, and of course their users, but it seems, in the right place, Three is offering a sensible alternative to wire line broadband NOW and that will only get better in the future.
It will be interesting to see the offers made by the mobile carriers as 2008 draws towards the Christmas marketing frenzy - just how much loss leading is available to the different carriers at that time will influence what's offered but I am assuming it will be more for less in each successive month between now and then. Having signed away our lives on our current deal, Exetel will have to live with what it has 'negotiated' for a while and hopefully meet the commitments we have made so that we can improve our offerings in 2009.
It seems that the general ISP business contiues to boom in Australia based on the various comments attributed to the different ISP 'spokesmen'. However when I looked at the share prices of the companies who are listed on the ASX it seemed to tell a different story. TPG/Soul hit yet another new low of 17 cents compared to its take over day price of 45 cents - a drop of more than 60% in its value in three months - a very strange scenario for a company that constantly states it's more profitable (in percentage terms) than Telstra and makes hugely more than all of the other ISPs (except Telstra and Optus) who are listed on the exchange.
http://www.asx.com.au/asx/research/chartsSearchResult.jsp?asxCode=SOT&TimeFrame=D6&compare=index&indices=XJO
That's a conundrum that defies explanation.
I ignored the plethora of NBN tender 'reports' and speculation as they are worthless with neither the reporters nor the people speaking to the reporters having any facts to base their speculation on.
I'm feeling very relaxed and will start to look at the UK comms press in more detail now that I will have more sensible internet availability and access to current newspapers and magazines. I've also arranged to meet with BT in London next week as well as a couple of other business related organizations so will have to alocate some thinking time to those projects.
But now it's time to continue my tasting of the (I'm told) 5,000 different single malts available from the main distillers and their offshoots before trying my first pheasant in many years.
It's really tough running a small and struggling ISP but someone has to do it.