Wednesday, July 16. 2008USING HSPA IN THE UKJohn Linton We arrived in the UK early Tuesday morning (UK time) and picked up our rental car and drove to a small hotel in a small village 15 miles out of the North of London which I selected because it was in walking distance of a main line train station. Our need for this was that we had agreed to meet Annette's father for lunch (who was returning to Australia after a trip to see the remains of the Lancaster he flew in the Second World War which had recently been discovered) which was a brave thing to do after a 22 hour flight and the resultant jet lag. The kind manager allowed us an early check in so after a shower and a change of clothes we walked to the station and caught a train to Oxford Street where all the various mobile companies have their major stores as I thought it would be a good idea to get the purchase of an HSPA service out of the way before the jet lag induced 'early shut down' cut in. We go to Oxford Street in less than 40 minutes giving us plenty of time to get the service of my choice and still have a leisurely stroll to the restaurant we had arranged for lunch. I had made a list of my preferred services before leaving so this should have been a piece of cake. Not going to work out that way.
BT Vodafone O2 Three T1 Mobile
So, last chance saloon, I found T1 Mobile and got a pleasant surprise. Someone who knew exactly what I wanted, had it in stock and was quite happy to install it on my notebook to prove how well it worked (which of course it should in central London). So he ripped open a packet and plugged a sim in to the dongle and the dongle in to a USB slot on my notebook and it configured itself in 20 - 30 seconds (no CD was needed) and a sub screen came up with all the technical details and one click connected it and a second click activated my browser. It connected at 3.6 mbps and I could download at 2.5 mbps (in Central London) so I paid my 100 pounds for the dongle and my 80 pounds for twenty days of 3 gb a day downloading and we walked, briskly up Bond Street, Down Piccadilly and up Swallow Street for a pleasant lunch with Annette's father at Bentley's. On the train trip home I used the HSPA to do some email and some browsing and while it was noticably slower than at the store it was fine. Back at the hotel the speed had dropped to 1.1 mbps and some times it dropped to below 100 kbps but we were in rural England in a 'valley' so I was not that concerned. At around 3 am in the morning the speed had increased back to 2.5 mbps so I suspect that 'saturation' and cell congestion is going to be a factor as I don't have any other explanation. Early days but HSPA is working for me and we will head North in a few hours to the Derbyshire peak district which will be interesting to see. At least my bet is alive for one more day! Tuesday, July 15. 2008Well - It's Bangkok Airport at 2.00 am......John Linton .......and I caught up on the industry news on the long flight. I'm not sure whether Michael Malone is stupid, he thinks everyone else is stupid or iiNEt really buys IP bandwidth very badly. I'd like to be able to give the reference but I'm not sure where to find it but, if I remember correctly, he said something very close to: "IP bandwidth cost around $A300.00 per mbps last year and it's dropped around 30% to $A200.00 per mbps this year." His comments were supported, or at least added to, by various other industry spokespeople about how bandwidth pricing is dropping but customer usage is increasing - pretty much what I said some days ago and I doubt any ISP is finding it any different. What I find disingenuous about M Malone's comment is that he must know it isn't true. Bandwidth 12 months ago cost between $A210 and $A250 per mbps at the sub 2 gbps level and that price has dropped to $A130 to $A150 for bandwidth being offered today - very different pricing than he was quoting. It's also true that IP bandwidth in 2.4 gbps 'chunks' is being quoted at sub $A100.00 by some carriers from early 2009. This will mean that there will be the ability for ISPs to increase download allowances from now onwards (as most have already done - including Exetel) but, as customer usage continues to increase, and increase quite rapidly, the actual cost of a monthly ADSL connection may well stay pretty much the same. ADSL2 plans from those providers who have their own DSLAMs could decrease significantly because their back haul costs have fallen to less than a tenth of what they used to be, perhpas to as little as a thirtieth of what they used to be, and those ISPs don't seem to have passed on even a part of those savings to their customers (perhaps one reason why TPG keeps stating it is making monthly profits of more than Telstra - at least in percentage terms). It will be interesting to see what prices for low end broadband services fall to over the coming few months, or alternatively, how much ISP profits increase over the remainder of this calendar year. Just as I was almost getting on my flight this afternoon I got a phone call from a decently credentialled IP provider who wanted to ensure I had got his latest proposal (I hadn't) which based on a quick two minute phone conversation may indicate that IP costs may fall closer to $A60.00 per mbps by mid-2009. Talk is always cheap and it will be interesting to see what offers materialise in written form over the coming months - right now it seems that pricing may halve in twelve months time. Maybe we are getting closer to DODO's "free ADSL"? The problem for every ISP is going to be different - Exetel's problem remains to stay in business while keeping our pricing below those of every other significant competitor. In any event it's something to think about for the next 11.5 hours of the trip - and there's my boarding call. Monday, July 14. 2008We're Off To See The Wizard.....John Linton ....well at least how far the Europeans have reached in the provision of fast HSPA. I 'tidied up' as many of the 'loose ends' and outstanding tasks as I could yesterday and will complete two more later this morning and then head for the airport. I really need the break, as much as you can ever get a break these days with email, VPNs and Voip, and am looking forward to time in the remaining English and Scottish wildernesses and finding out more about bird protection and regeneration projects in those places - particularly the white tailed sea eagle, the golden eagle and the red kite (which we saw last time in Wales). Inevitably there will also be the business related issues of obtaining and using HSPA services both via 'dongle' and via plugging a sim directly into the new notebook I bought for that purpose (plus the fact that lugging my 4 year old lap top around has been a pita or the past few years). On previous trips to the UK over the last few years the number of hotels that had broadband was far less than I had expected once you left the major cities and big towns - that was mainly due to my desire to always stay in the country rather than the cities and often remote country areas. It's unreasonable to expect there to be broadband on the Scottish inner isles (let alone the outer islands or the Hebrides) and I found it mildly annoying not to be able to have internet connectivity to check my email and look at our data base reports to see how Exetel was doing in my absence. Looking at the coverage maps for Three and Vodafone that is likely to still be a problem in many of the areas I'm planning to visit but the BT coverage looks significantly better. My theory is that if I bought a new light weight notebook I could get a very long battery life which would make it possible to leave the notebook on all day while driving and somewhere along the different routes we would eventually pick up a GSM signal (or whatever was available). That's the theory. The other testing I want to do is to see just what sort of speeds I get in remote areas and, just as importantly, in densely populated areas (London and Manchester have popluation and business densities much larger than the Sydney or Melbourne inner cities). Everything I have read about the European's implementation of HSPA is that they have coped with their 'spectrum limitation issues' very well with no restraints on the numbers of users in any 'cell area' experiencing contention or speed problems. I'm looking forward to trying that out for myself and see how it compares with Steve's experiences of WiMAx in the USA (basically unusable in many densely populated areas last time he was in LA and Las Vegas for InterOp). Though maybe even a city as well serviced as Las Vegas has trouble coping with an influx of 100,000 engineers all try to rip off the local unprotected wireless networks. Another business element of the trip is to meet with BT and find out what opportunities there may be for Exetel in the EU buying wholesale services from BT or other carriers. I did some preliminary investigations and got some 'generic' pricing which seemed just OK but I have an introduction to two of the key BT Wholesale people via an old acquaintance and I will try and meet with them while I'm, briefly, in London. The last business component is to meet with one of the world's largest 'independent' providers of SMS services to see what we can obtain in terms of interconnect points around the world and pricing. Our SMS service continues to grow in popularity and it's an excelent 'foot in the door' service for Exetel's business services generally. While a service that costs between 3 cents (big business volumes) and 5 cents (one off residential user charge) is not going to make any big difference to Exetel's revenues (or profits) it's a very important service in many more ways than those I've referenced here. I doubt that we will ever be able to get the 'right deal' in Australia and it will be interesting to see what might be possible in the EU. (providing my French oral skills are up to the task!). So it's "goodbye from me" - as I don't know when/if I'll be able to write here again. For those people who have written to me so unkindly over that time - thank you - it's good to know I have retained the ability to 'seriously annoy' people like you - it gives me a great deal of pleasure to know that you are stupid enough to go out of your way to waste your time reading what I wrote and then waste even more of your time writing to me - you gave me a great deal of amusement. For those of you who have sent me encouragement to write these musings over the past eleven and a half months - thank you very much - I really appreciated hearing from you and knowing that at least some people were getting something from sharing my thoughts on the vagaries of running a small comms business in Australia. Sunday, July 13. 2008Most Things Seem Too Hard The First Time You Do ThemJohn Linton I don't know when it happens 'on average' in a young human beings life that they discover for the first time that, if they persist against previous conceptions that something is not possible for them to do, miracle of miracles, they will actually do it. For me it was in my 12th year when I desperately wanted to overcome my puny physical frame and kick a soccer ball from the corner spot to the near side of the goal post with enough 'curl' to score if the goalkeeper wasn't fully alert. I used to spend 30 plus minutes of every day of the winter and Easter terms in an English prep school practicing kicking the ball. At first I couldn't get the ball to reach the post more than a few centimeters off the ground but throughout the winter term I asked every person I could and watched as many oeople as I could in terms of their run up, feet positions, upper body positions and how they held their arms until shortly before the end of that term I could get the ball from the corner spot to head high by the time it reached the goal post. It took me the whole of the next term (undoubtedly helped by the growth in height and weight that occurs around that age) to learn how to put the right amount of spin on the ball so that it would 'dip late' and actualy go into the goal. I succeeded and my ability to score the occasional goal from a corner plus the ability (much later) to use that control to pick out any team mate in a scoring position allowed me to play in the school rep teams for the whole of my senior school career. Not much of an achievement. True enough. In itself it was an horrendously wasteful expenditure of time in almost always bitingly cold and often rainy or snowy conditions. But for me, and for every person who has ever despaired of ever doing anything that, at first sight and for many attempts seems too difficult, it was the basis for never giving up in trying to do what I really wanted to do (and believed that unless innate physical limitations prohibited success - I never did win the 400 meters in the Olympics). I realise that every human being goes through this pre-adolescent or early adolescent 'rite of passage' on their way to the horrors of adult hood and the unrelenting demands of self sufficiency and that every human being finds their own level of 'belief' in what's possible for them to achieve in every different aspect of their ongoing lives. I am not suggesting that my personal experiences are 'special' in any way. What brought this to mind? Well it might have been the interview on TV while I was having a cup of coffee of the current "Defence Minister" being very kindly dealt with by Laurie Oakes - I mean - where did he get dragged up from - the man can't put two words together and his vocabulary and speech seem to indicate he left school at 15 and never picked up a book or a pen since - yet he has succeeded in becoming a cabinet minister with serious responsibilities despite his clear natural unsuitability for the position (how he got selected to run for parliament in the first place would make interesting reading). That aside, it was actually reading through the career plans for the Exetel employees and seeing the diversity of 'confidence' that was displayed by the 30 plus different people. Of course, when any process is new (and I doubt that any of our younger employees had ever thougt about a career planning process before they were asked to complete an Exetel questionnaire) it is difficult to grasp just what is involved and too little thought together with too little knowledge of either the company you work for or the industry you are currently working in lakes for a difficult task to complete. I'm too removed from the direct management of even a small number like 30 people to actually contribute as effectively as I would like to the explanation and direction of what each Exetel person might like to consider the best ways of developing their careers over the coming three years (either within Exetel or with some other entity). I am reduced, in most cases, to do as Napoleon once said a "commander's" chief responsibility was - "to deal in hope". By which I interpret him to have meant that anyone who has some reponsibility for other people must do their best to help them achieve as much as possible irrespective of the circumstances they may currently find themselves in. It seems to have worked very well in a long career; with one notable exception of course. It doesn't matter whether it's some sickeningly 'sweet' Hollywod 'feel good' movie or every sporting triumph story you've ever heard but it is a 'truism' that any human being can achieve (with only a very, very few limitations imposed by physical attributes) practically anything they are determined to achieve if they keep trying long enough - and often re-think their approach and look more widely for advice. I would like to continue to believe that I can do the last thing I have always wanted to achieve (in a business sense) and in doing that hope that it will assist quite a few other people achieve what they most want to achieve. Hopefully that small group of buildings coming in to view isn't Quatre Bras. Saturday, July 12. 2008How Ethically Or Morally Guilty......John Linton ....is a person who watches a group of males, in balaclavas and carrying sawn off shotguns and a large scale laser drill, entering a bank at 2 am in the morning who doesn't call the police? Can he, or she, make the assumption that they are just a group of eccentrically dressed friends who are paranoid about their anonymity delivering some gun shaped chocolate to another friend who happens to be working in the bank late as a cheer up gift? The drill? Well, they might have wanted to hang a picture or something. Absurd? Absolutely - the anecdotal person is guilty as Hell of a sin of omission or, in quasi legal terms, probably guilty of being an accessory before the fact to bank theft. Would any reasonable person not call the police? I doubt it (though if they'd just defaulted on a mortgage payment and been turned out of their home by that particular bank they may well reach another conclusion I suppose). So, as a parent, what do you do when you see one of your children watching a movie on their computer that has only just been released? Do you: a) Say that can never happen as I never go into my teenage children's rooms without the back up of an armed response unit and a decontamination suit? b) Silently thank your lucky stars that you don't have to pay for yet another useless video rental. c) Think that at least it's not hard core porn this time. d) Congratulate yourself that you gave your children a computer so they don't have to steal other people's property to feed their addiction? (no wait - you can't say that can you?) e) Shake your head with a wry smile and tell yourself you'll never understand all this new technology. f) Angrily walk over and switch off the computer and tell your child that if he/she ever downloads copyright material again you will remove their internet access for as long as they remain in your house and start that process by removing it for the next seven days. g) Accept your child's advice of: "muuuuum, I'm too busy now can't it wait", sigh gently and hope you never have to consult a solicitor and spend a lot of money having a letter like this written: Dear Sir, We act for Exetel Pty Limited ( forwarded to our client, dated 2 July 2008 and 9 July 2008 respectively, both entitled Exetel). We are in receipt of two letters you have"Notice of Infringement of Copyright" As already requested of you by our client, we ask that you forward all future correspondence to us. Our client is very concerned by the unsubstantiated assertions contained in the Notices alleging that our client’s customers have infringed your members’ copyright in movies and television shows and that our client may have authorised that infringement. Those extremely serious allegations have been made without any proper evidence having been provided to support them. Our client is unable to respond meaningfully to the Notices unless and until you provide our client with proper evidence to support the allegations. Our client requires the full technical details of the investigations you claim to have carried out, including the following: 1. The detailed process undertaken by AFACT in compiling the schedule titled (the Notices)."Summary of unauthorized Film and TV Show Transmissions" Schedule 2. The methodology used to identify the Peer IP address as referred to in the Schedule; 3. The methodology used to record Exetel’s customers’ alleged usage; 4. The methodology used to identify the files allegedly downloaded as referred to in the Schedule; 5. What is meant by ‘percentage of the files shared’ referred to in the Schedule; 6. The methodology used to measure the percentage of the files allegedly shared as referred to in the Schedule; 7. What is meant by ‘percentage of the files allegedly downloaded’ as referred to in the Schedule; 8. The methodology used to measure the percentage of the files allegedly downloaded as referred to in the Schedule; and 10. The methodology used to measure the number of megabytes downloaded as referred to in the Schedule. The Schedule is unclear as to whether it is alleged that the files identified have been downloaded or uploaded by Exetel’s customers. Please clarify what you have alleged. The percentage of the "file shared" does not correlate with the percentage of the "file downloaded" or the numerical value placed on the "MB downloaded". Please clarify. In any event, it appears to us that in all instances claimed within the Schedule, the percentage of the file allegedly downloaded (or uploaded as the case may be) is so small as to be completely unusable in a practical sense and may well not be a ‘substantial part’ of a work within the meaning of section 14 of the We place on the record that our client denies and takes great offence at the following false allegations contained in the Notices: (the);9. What is meant by the ‘number of megabytes downloaded’ referred to in the Schedule;Copyright Act 1968 (Cth)."The fact that Exetel customers continue to infringe the copyright of AFACT’s members and affiliates suggests that Exetel has taken insufficient action to prevent these or similar infringements from taking place. The failure to effectively prevent infringements from occurring, in circumstances where Exetel knows that infringements of copyright are being committed by customers, or would have reason to suspect that infringements are occurring from the volume and type of the activity involved, may constitute authorisation of copyright infringement by Exetel." We customers when allegations of copyright infringement are received by Exetel. It is clear that Exetel has an appropriate ‘acceptable use’ policy in place and take appropriate steps to ensure that its customers comply with that acceptable use policy. We draw your attention to section 202 of the regard. We look forward to your prompt response in providing the information requested above. enclose for your reference a copy of the "Exetel Abuse Block" notice that is sent to ExetelCopyright Act. Our client reserves all of its rights in this...or as could be inferred happened in this case - cause their ISP to have such a letter written on their behalf (and pay the quite considerable costs invoved in taking this and quite possibly many other steps involving huge amounts of money because they can't be bothered to teach their children right from wrong? Can I expect any such people who have done this to give me the $3,000 it cost to get this letter written? Let me think about that......hmmm......probably not. How about the $A750,000 if it goes to a long drawn out court case? Don't have to think about that - I know the answer. How about the $A2 - 3,000,000 that would be a reasonable estimate of the 'other side's' legal costs? The $A500,000 or so that a fine would likely to be? Why is it that, apart from stealing from "unknown" media companies and their clients do some of Exetel's customers think it's "OK" to steal $A3 - $A4,000,000 from Annette, Steve and me? It sounds so obvious that a customer of a service company, which they chose as being best for their needs and who charges so little for their services, shouldn't be stolen from in this way - why don't some of Exetel's customers see it as clearly as that? If they don't - why should Exetel continue to provide them with services? Did Australian education systems and 'good parenting guides' exclude all references to morality and ethics over the last 30 years? That seems to me to be the only explanation. Friday, July 11. 2008I Hadn't Realised Quite How 'Big" Exetel Has Grown...John Linton ....until one of our NW engineers provided a consolidated MRTG report. Any Exetel customer (and of course employee) has access to the main MRTG reports that provide 'minute by minute' utilisation information on all of our different links between our customers in different States and Territories and on our different services as well as our links to the 'outside world'. I can remember, and it was not very long ago at all, that Steve proudly sent me an email with an MRTG report that showed we had switched over 1 gbps for the first time. It was even more recently that I received an email with a report showing that we had switched over 2 gbps for the first time. The new MRTG report shows what amount of traffic we are now delivering to our customers combining the new PoP's links from Pipe and WAIX as well as the contributions from the PeerApp and Akamai caching clusters in Sydney - which show a astonishing 3 gbps plus of traffic being delivered to our customers last night. Now the Akamai/PeerApp/WAIX/Pipe traffic has always been delivered and separate graphs show the amounts but we had never combined those caching feeds in to our overall 'picture' before. What it means is that we have 2 gbps of 'raw' IP data (1.5 gbps from Verizon and 500 mbps from Optus) and now slightly more than an additional 1 gbps from the different caching and peering points. The peering and caching is providing one third of our customer's needs and, because the cost of that data ranges from $90.00 per mbps to much less than $10.00 per mbps it reduces the total cost per gigabyte delivered to a customer substantially. Together with the progressively lower prices for 'raw IP' data it makes an enormous difference to the cost of providing a broadband service - which is just as well because what these figures also show is that "on average" a customer is downloading around three and a half times more each month than they did when we commenced in business in early 2004 - an average of 6 gigabytes a month compared to 1.7 gigabytes a month in March 2004. This in turn means, despite all of the economies of scale (reflected in IP buy prices and slight reductions in ADSL port costs) it is more expensive to provide an end user service today than it was 4 years ago. Sad but true. As IP pricing continues to fall we really don't expect that to result in lower service prices because the actual 'average' customer continues to require more downloads - as internet use more and more involves streaming video and the fact that graphics keep adding 'bulk' to previous versions. We are slowly coming to grips with how to get more efficiency from the different caching 'engines' we have deployed over the past 12 months and are, finally, seeing much more positive results that go some way to ameliorating the pain we have suffered along the way from the 'vagaries' of the software and our own inabilities and lack of skills. We have also got a lot of value from the Allot boxes in 'pushing' excessive downloads in to 'quieter periods' of bandwidth use and this has made our bandwidth usage far more efficient; now reaching close to 90% utilization rather than the low 70%s we were achieving before that. Adding the additional PoPs in the other States and Territories has added another level of complexity to what we do on a day to day basis as has the ongoing duplication of the Sydney main PoP with the second PoP we activated last year. VoIP services are also growing far more rapidly over the past 6 months and the additional equipment and links and lines needed for these services also adds a different type of complexity in providing those services. Similarly the SMS service (now approaching 500,000 messages a month and the calling card services are adding significantly to the voice minute traffic we are switching for Exetel customers. We will trial a Cisco protocol based router solution (a 2 gb version was loaned to us yesterday) to determine whether it is better than the Allot solution we currently have in place and whether it operates without as much 'hand holding' and sporadic 'hissy fits'. If that works out we will 'live trial' it in Melbourne later this year and then have to consider whether or not to add that sort of capability to the inter State PoPs. Controlling, much more exactly than we do now, P2P traffic is going to be important, not only because of its effect on bandwidth usage, but because of the possible implications of future changes to the ways P2P is used generally and the ways that specific types of P2P are used. These issues were one of the reasons we chose to become familiar with this sort of network 'management'. If the current growth in new customers continues at the current record (for us) pace we will soon think of 3 gbps as very ho hum in the future, but at the moment it's quite amazing to see just how far Exetel has come since the first ADSL1 application was received in February 2004. Thursday, July 10. 2008Only Four Sleeps To Go.......John Linton .......pity there remain around 18 sleeps of things to do before that time. I remember now why I have so irregularly taken a holiday over the past 20 or so years - I'd book them and then cancel them a week or so before I was due to go as there was seldom a year when things were running smoothly enough for me to believe I could spare the time. I also remember one or two holidays I did take that I ruined for my traveling companion(s) by constantly calling back to Australia and then worrying about what I heard or thought I had heard. This time, as with last year and the year before, I have no choice as I'm so physically and mentally tired that actually attempting to continue to work is not an option - even I notice I'm doing too many things badly at the moment. How pathetic and self indulgent you may now be thinking - and who could blame you? There is a point to that particularly 'poor me' opening which is just how hard and consistently is it to expect anyone, in any position, to work in this period of commercial endeavour where most 'commentary' is on "quality of life in the workplace". Of course such commentary on 'quality of life' is almost always made by people who, as far as I can see, have never worked very hard, if at all, in any part of their life. I'm sure there are exceptions but I'm not in a forgiving mood at the moment. I used to say to people who asked me what I did to relax or what 'hobbies' I had that "a person who needs a hobby needs a different career" - by which I meant of course, if you don't enjoy the work you do (or at least get more satisfaction/reward from) more than anything else you could do with that time, then you needed to change your career. Of course all I got for my trouble in pointing out that jewel of advice was blank or self satisfied pitying looks at what an idiot I was. Everyone to their particular view I suppose. This melange of incoherent thought crossed my mind as I once again pondered on why so many Australians take 'sickies' and why that 'right' has been enshrined in Australian work practices. I particularly wondered why so many young males seem to suffer so greatly from one day maladies which don't allow them to attend their work place but don't stop them playing pool or going to the pub or just hanging out with their friends who have no job to go to. Clearly they aren't either needed by their employer nor are they more interested in their job than they are in doing something else when they are needed to work. Long ago the 'long weekend sickie' (where a person calls in sick early on Friday morning before heading off for a long weekend with their mates) and the 'Monday hangover sickie' (where a person has such a great weekend they drink and stay up to excess) have been identified by employers as accounting for 70% of all 'short term medical problems' for employees. So much so that no employer ever believes that ANY employee is ever actually sick on Mondays or Fridays and just regards people who take those days off as lacking in ethics. Is this too jaundiced a way of looking at 'sickies'? My mother never got sick. My wife (and my children's mother) never gets sick. Why would that be as they seem to have the same number of colds and 'flu' and all of the other minor ailments that afflict the human race over the years? The answer, obviously, is that they have too much to do (for other people) to ever let any physical discomfort get in the way of them discharging their obligations to their family and their other commitments. So are all 'sickie takers' cynically unethical bludgers? Who knows and, apart from the people they work with who have to do their work while the 'sickie taker' is skiving off with his mates, who cares? No employer has found a way of eliminating the 'sickie taking' problem as far as I know. Most competent employers deal with it by hiring people who will be more interested in progressing their career than by damaging their prospects by Friday and Monday 'sickies'. As companies like Exetel operate in their early years there are no such problems as the few people in the company share a dedication and an interest in keeping the company 'alive' and take so much personal responsibility for all aspects of customer happiness that the problem is to get them to cut down on their working hours. It's clearly not possible to ignore the need to ensure that employees who are genuinely unwell or unfit aren't financially disadvantaged when they need to undergo medical or hospital treatment that includes the need not to go to work - we do live in a civilised commercial society. But that means that the healthy and diligent are 'punished' by our nanny state regulations in that the fact that they choose to work every day of the week and deal with minor discomforts with over the counter pharmaceuticals rather than getting their mummy or their partner to call someone at the office and say they are sick and won't be in today. This shouldn't be the case. It's actually grossly unfair and therefore it shouldn't exist in commercial practice. In the 'bad old days' I know of companies that used to deal with this insidious disruption by reducing any annual increase by a percentage dependent on the number of 'sickies' taken by an employee. I doubt that it ever achieved anything except losing valuable employees over the next 12 month period or made them less valuable because of discontent. So, subject to legal advice, and general 'directorial' agreement, we will make a change to our own work practices by giving our employees who don't take 'sickies' a financial reward equivalent to 1.5 times the value of the 'sick days' they didn't take in each financial year. It seems only fair, at least to me, that people who choose to work on the 'public holidays' awarded by the nanny state (mandated sick leave) should be paid for the extra time they 'volunteer' to put in. We will probably also introduce a 'profit sharing scheme' in this financial year; we are in the final stages of getting the documentation from the accountants. One of the eligibility criteria will be 'full attendance' or however that turns out to be worded. My expectation of introducing such changes in to Exetel is that they will prevent a problem that has cursed Australian companies for decades ever developing in our company as it gets larger. Wednesday, July 9. 2008I've Never Been Good At "playing nicely with others"......John Linton .........maybe I'm going to have to learn how to do that....... Following the recent receipt of copyright infringement notices from an organisation called AFACT I had replied directly to AFACT and copied our lawyers on my reply to which they responded, in part, as set out: "Dear John, Mark has provided me with a copy of AFACT's letter and briefed me on the background to this matter. It might be helpful if we could have a telephone conference with you and Steve to discuss how you would like to approach the matter from here. My initial thoughts are that you might want us to write to AFACT requiring them to provide full technical details supporting the allegations of copyright infringement made in their letter - for example, requiring them to specify exactly how and what they did (at a detailed technical level) to come up with the list of alleged infringements. We assume that AFACT downloaded the relevant video files using a bittorrent client and then kept a log of all the peers that supplied parts of the files, but it would be useful to have AFACT confirm this in writing. Certainly (as you have made clear in your own email to AFACT), all you have at the moment is a bare, unsubstantiated allegation of infringement.As you are probably aware, there is a 'defence' in section 112E of the Copyright Act that protects ISPs from being held liable for infringements 'merely because another person uses the facilities so provided [by the ISP] to do something the right to do which is included in the copyright'. This is a still relatively new section, having been introduced by amendments to the Copyright Act in 2000, and the courts are still working out the full scope of that defence. The courts have essentially said that a copyright owner has to show something more than the mere fact that an ISP's facilities were used - they need to show that the ISP 'sanctioned, countenanced or approved' the use of their facilities for that purpose. Attached is a copy of the most recent Federal Court decision on the effect of section 112E if you are interested. We would be happy to provide you with a detailed advice on this issue if you would like. There are also likely to be additional considerations flowing from the Telecommunications Act and the Privacy Act that would restrict an ISP's ability to monitor directly the activities of its customers. For example, it may be that it would unlawful for you to intercept and monitor directly the data being sent by your customers. If this is correct, then there is probably little more that Exetel could do to prevent customers from infringing copyright than what you have already done - namely, prohibiting such conduct in your terms and conditions of use. However, we have not fully considered this issue and would need to carefully review the relevant legislation if you wanted formal legal advice on this on which you could rely. Finally, it also occurs to us that if Exetel received such a letter from AFACT then it is highly likely that other ISPs received similar letters. If Exetel is a member of an industry association (for example the Australian Internet Industry Association (IIA)), you may want to raise (or us to raise) this issue as something that members might want to obtain joint legal advice on and take a joint position on. In our experience in the Kazaa case (Universal Music v Sharman Networks) in 2004, the copyright owners will fight hard and make it a long and very expensive court battle if they decide to try to make their point. It might help dissuade them from taking this course if they are up against an industry body of member organisations adversely affected by the position the copyright owners are taking, rather than just various individual ISPs with more limited resources. I have little doubt that he was right in suggesting that Exetel was not alone in having such letters of 'demand' sent and that other ISPs would also have received similar 'demands. I was less than enthusiastic about "working with other ISPs/ISP associations in determining a 'common ground' in dealing with these issues" although I understand that the costs of dealing with a "test case" law suit directed solely at Exetel would be well over $A500,000 and quite possibly a great deal more - not a pleasant thought but then it's an equally unpleasant thought to do anything but obey the laws of the country in which we operate as those laws are interpreted by our courts - not by anyone else. Maybe I'll just have to learn a new skill and have Exetel join an "Industry Association"......it's never too late....even for the oldest of dogs. So we had a conversation and it was really good to talk to a lawyer who knew the details of P2P and the differences between the various methods of obtaining files from the internet and who had also had first hand experience in a major copyright lawsuit. I feel better about going on holidays and leaving the dealings on this issue in competent 'legal hands'. So we agreed they would write to AFACT requiring them to provide complete technical and engineering details, including the actual methods and copies of the code used to identify material and verify the material actually was subject to copyright, before issuing further notices. His view of our current processes and practices of dealing with infringement notices was that they meet every requirement of current Australian laws and probably are far more comprehensive than those employed by the ISPs of which he has first hand knowledge. This issue will undoubtedly'play out' over the next period of time with AFACT clearly attempting to move from the previous positions of other such organisations of attempting to address the end user to their new position of postulating that the ISP is guilty of "collusion" in not closing down ALL P2P traffic on the basis that it "is clearly ilicit". This is a pretty far stretch of the current laws (or any conceivable interpretation of them) but there is little doubt that AFACT is positioning their correspondece campaign to go that way. As an ethical human being I have sympathy for anyone objecting to their property being stolen. As someone involved in running a business I have limited time and money to become the scapegoat of some campaign to establish precedent in Australian laws. Tuesday, July 8. 2008Humanity Continues To Adapt And Grow........John Linton .......it appears the same can't be said for the NSW Government. Exetel is responding to a NSW Government tender to allow the company, if successful, to be included on the list of approved providers so that we can tender for the communications requirements of the various NSW State government departments as they arise. We haven't bothered applying for State Government, or Federal Government accreditation before because we didn't have the required 'longevity' or appropriate revenue/profit results over the required periods....maybe we still don't. I am not personally involved in answering the tender but I was asked to respond to the question regarding the requirement to have an ISO9000 series "quality assurance" accreditation and that made my mind 'flash back' to the 1980s when governments, all round the world apparently, somehow came to the conclusion that it could only allow companies with an "internationally recognised system of quality control" to bid for their business. This was the question: "(A) Quality Assurance/ Quality Management Process I well remember the ISO and their Australian equivalents (AS) quality standards and the accreditation processes required to obtain them. It was the sheerest nonsense that had as much relevance in ensuring a company produced a high quality product, or service, as a speed limit sign on a freeway has to ensuring no vehicle exceeds the speed limit - none whatsoever. However the company I was associated with at that time derived almost 33% of its revenue from State governments and the Federal government so the long and pointless process of acquiring AS9001 (I think) was undertaken and after wasting thousands of man hours and spending $A50,000 on external 'standards consulting" fees - lo and behold - we received a piece of paper attesting that we made a quality product. Stuff and nonsense. Nothing had changed in anything we did before the process other than all our realistic documentation was turned into gobbledigook - however the gobbledigook did conform to exact gobbledigook standard layouts and paragraph headings and sub clauses. What a complete waste of time. Since the Volvo experiment in the early 1970s followed by the Western Commercial world's long lasting love affair with the Japanese processes of Total Quality Management (now handily universally referred to as TQM) governments have been obsessed with their bureaucratic rights to insist that "Quality" is a key benchmark for the purchase of services using public money. Highly laudable (choruses of muffled "hear , hears" from the back benches of every parliament house in Australia). Pity it means damn all to the actual quality of the product or service 'manufactured' using an ISO standard. I had been fortunate to go to Japan several times a year in the late 1970s and early 1980s accompanying large commercial and government prospective buyers for the then unheard of Facom (Fujitsu) mainframe computers. These trips involved visiting the Numazu, and other, plants where these 'huge' computers and their components were manufactured. Over a period of some three years I learned a lot about high quality manufacturing processes as the various Facom and Fujitsu executives briefed the prospective buyers on their processes and procedures that allowed them to manufacture main frame computers that had an MTBF of 60 months compared to IBM's 13 months (at that time). Even more importantly why the Facom computers had a post installation "Engineering Change" incidence of one per 48 months compared to IBM's one per two months. The answer was not TQM it was "Zero Defect". Zero Defect was part Volvo experiment, part General Motors production line robot theory but most of all it was instilling the desire (not the requirement) for every person in every manufacturing unit to aim to produce not a "highest quality" product but a product that was perfect. And they did - not just for a time but over the time they made the product. It recognised human fallibility and human physical weakness (tiredness/illness) as well as recognising the 'unthinking nature' of computers and computer controlled robots and found a solution. It made ISO9001 look like a kindergarten drawing compared to a Matisse riverside cafe scene. So we didn't put in a 9000 series quality assurance system when we created Exetel we put in ZD which I attempted to explain in 300 (actually 320) words: The processes and procedures that Exetel Pty Ltd uses to manage its day to day and ongoing business have not been developed or certified against the ISO 9000 standards nor are they based on any codified TQM system. I don't expect that a few words (300 or any other number) will satisfy anyone, but the fact is that unless something is fully automated and then cross checked by more than three different 'human' functions it isn't going to deliver the highest possible level of quality let alone a perfect 'product'. So, Exetel's - and any other company that aspires to 'perfect quality' will assiduously document what it is going to offer the marketplaces it aims to serve and then develop the computer systems and the 'human' cross checking that will allow that objective to be met - by eliminating as much human interaction as possible - not by creating manuals/procedure descriptions or paperwork of any kind. I'm not sure that a government department responsible for understanding quality will ever understand the ZD concept that if a human being does something it can never be relied on, over time, to be done perfectly. Only automation is perfect - at least after the 7th or 8th time you fix the bugs. Monday, July 7. 2008The More it Changes The More It Stays The Same.....John Linton ........and Stupider Stephen should take a real look at the present before he takes this sort of leap back in to the past: http://www.minister.dbcde.gov.au/media/media_releases/2008/051 If he thinks that yet another $A270 million thrown after the last over $A650 million is a better bet than his recent cancellation of the OPEL contract he has achieved a double standard of breathtaking duplicity even for his incredibly low standards of intellectual consideration. Under this latest "initiative" SS is providing funding of $6,000 per rural customer for an ISP to provide them with a satellite connection. Of course this is simply another version of the previous 'snouts in the trough' schemes that have helped fatten the wallets of companies like Soul (now deceased), WestNet (now deceased), iiNet and InterNode and a plethora of small regional companies who have been happy to take this handout and deliver stuff all to the end user before (in the small companies cases, going broke and in most of the larger companies cases being bought out) and leaving the $A6,000 handouts as yet another total waste of taxpayer money. I can't remember all the names of the companies who have seen 'the City of Gold' these hand outs conjure up but they have taken these subsidies and gone broke all over the Australian continent. The latest small one was in Albury a couple of weeks ago - some outfit called "DragNet" who "specialised" in providing broadband via satellite using government subsidy in the local district. But there was the mob in Cairns (I don't remember their name but they spent a fair whack of their government handout sponsoring the local basketball team, the Taipans, and other ego trips - not on the infrastructure the subsidies were intended for) and then the group in Gippsland who had to be bailed out after going broke and so many others all of whom could never, in their wildest most alcohol fueled dreams have ever made a go of their crazily conceived schemes based on taking money from a gullible Federal agency. So SS doesn't need the OPEL project because the NBN makes it unnecessary but 3 months later he needs the exact same expenditure to "cover areas not likely to be covered by the NBN" and he thinks giving this money to yet another group of carpet baggers is better than having Optus and Leightons, under strict tender and contract clauses, responsible for providing broadband to rural Australia. I suppose, courtesy of 11 years of conservative government and the "resources boom", SS has access to the biggest pork barrel ever seen in Australia. He must be assuming that no-one will notice that he is now saying the opposite of what he said three months ago and is passing hundreds of millions of tax payers dollars in to the hands of groups of people who have only demonstrated that they can take huge government hand outs and deliver virtually nothing at best and absolutely nothing in most cases. So this latest tranche of handouts to the needy communications companies will keep them going for another 3 - 6 months before SS has to "announce" another major government funding initiative to deliver 'broadband' to rural Australia. I wonder if anyone of his staff has told SS exactly what these drip feed 'rural' expenditures are going to cost over the next three years? I still don't understand why, given the very restricted nature of the services actually being delivered under these 'snouts in the trough' hand outs, SS hasn't woken up to the fact that HSPA already delivers the sort of service levels he is spending $A2,500 for up front and then another $A3,600 over the next three years. Of course HSPA doesn't need any subsidy as one of these rural users can get the promised 3 gb of downloads at better than 512/128 for $A40.00 a month from a CHOICE of HSPA providers. Why on Earth in 2008 is SS and CK promoting the use of satellite? Haven't their staff told them about HSPA? It seems to me that someone in the ACT needs to read up on what's happening in the rest of the world where HSPA is being provided to remote communities that make White Cliffs look like the Sydney CBD. If they ever actually did the absolute minimum required in what I imagine part of their job remit looks like there would be no more money wasted paying greedy individuals to sub contract out installing satellite dishes and then going broke before more than a few months of service is delivered. Then again, it seems that the quality of advice and the ministerial thought given to the latest pig feeding is on a par with the advice and depth of thought that went in to the 'no child in Australia will live without high speed broadband by December 2010". Sunday, July 6. 2008I've Always Been Told Money Can't Buy Happiness.....John Linton ....but I wouldn't mind giving it a try and seeing for myself. Not that I'm, in any way, complaining about how life has treated me (or I have treated life) - I've had a great time - thanks to an upbringing and education that made me understand that life will always have an infinite number of ways and choices available and no matter how 'badly' any single choice turns out you will always have an infinite number of choices to redress whatever current situation you may find yourself in. What I would like more money for, at least what Exetel would like more money for, is a seemingly endless list that exceeds our capital expenditure budgets by so much there appears to be no place to start. What brought this pointless observation to mind? Probably, earlier this morning, looking at the 'estimates' being provided to us by Cisco and two other manufacturers for equipment that they believe would 'greatly improve' our operations and listening to customer suggestions as to what would improve their satisfaction of the services we provide to them. Exetel uses a lot of Cisco equipment (at least a lot in our terms of a small ISP - being 2 x 10000s, 20 x 7301s, 2 x 7506s and an about to be installed 6500). We have bought none of that equipment from Cisco direct or from an 'authorised' Cisco Australia reseller but from a Cisco USA authorised 'second hand' Cisco reseller (always with Cisco Inc warranties). This, mildly, annoys Cisco Australia who don't understand why we dont pay them twice as much for identical equipment "like every other ISP in Australia". (erhaps it a part of the need Exetel has to keep all costs to the absolute minimum to ofset all the disadvantages of being smaller than all of our competitors). I suppose there are risks buying second hand Cisco equipment but basically the equipment certified by Cisco US is, more often than not, new equipment that has been 'retrieved' for non-payment or almost new equipment that has been found surplus to requirements by huge Cisco buyers around the world. In any event, Steve has been buying such equipment from the same source for almost ten years without us ever having any problems. We have had one board failure in that time which is actually slightly below the statistical average for 'new' Cisco equipment. Cisco are now trying to sell us replacements for our Mitel VOIP 'PABX' and our Allot P2P control equipment offering a generous buy back/trade in on that hardware and very deep discounts on the new Cisco hardware. All very interesting and very attractive. However we already have similar equipment (obviously) and it doesn't matter how good the Cisco offer may eventually turn out to be the fact will remain that we are throwing awy equipment that meets our needs and paying more for equipment that Cisco assure us will meet our needs but we can't be sure. If only we had more money we could trial them side by side and if it didn't work out we could just shrug our shoulders and console ourselves for the trivial financial loss that we were a progressive company that constantly looks for better solutions like "every other ISP in Australia does" - at least according to some of our suppliers. We do look for better solutions in everything we do but that usually involves us in risk and expenditure - because we don't have 'spare money' to build an in house test 'laboratory' and the spare funds to allocate people to constantly 'testing' new 'solutions'. If only we did......... Similarly I've been trying to put the final touches to some new plans that I would like to put up before I go away in mid July Everyone of our customers who has made suggestions basically suggests that lower prices and more download allowances would be what's required. I agree completely and wish it was possible to do that. Unfortunately it is very, very difficult and Exetel's broadband plans are already at lower prices per gb of download than any other ISP's plans (at least as far as I can see) and we have already factored in to the current plans the price cuts we have obtained on IP and slightly lower ADSL2 port costs. We have also 'given away' $300,000 a year in "planned" profit to the various fauna/flora/environment protection programs we are now supporting and another $200,000 to set up the Sri Lankan call centre to provide public holiday, weekend and longer daily support hours for customers on the basis of previous sugggestions for improving the service we provide. So, as I make my way through my 'before you go away you really must do this' list it is apparent that we need much more money - I just don't personally have any and I don't know how Exetel can make that much profit to be able to fund all the things that really 'need' to be done. Saturday, July 5. 2008"Privacy Rights/Shmights - Who Cares?".....John Linton ..."We're talking money and money talks louder than loony/leftie conceptual idiocies of so called "rights"..or so the sub-text seems to read as pronounced by U.S. District Judge Louis L. Stanton: http://www.smh.com.au/news/web/youtube-told-to-hand-over-viewing-logs/2008/07/04/1214950993356.html You may have also read about the recent French legislation concerning the 'responsibilities' of network owners in the 'transport' of data over their networks? I suppose another way of looking at it is that pretty shortly, both in the USA and the EU court cases will be heard that will establish new legal precedents (or not) concerning just what "rights" to "privacy" any individual or entity has to information that relates to his/their theft of another person's/entity's property. I read these sorts of articles with a great deal of interest as I have real money invested in Exetel's business and I have significant responsibilities to 40 employees and nearing 80,000 customers. I am neither 13 years old (and the current bunch of 13 year olds seem to have the same regard for property rights as Attila the Hun did) nor their parents (who, far too often, seem to have the same attitude to parental control and the responsibility for ensuring their offspring understand the basic concepts of the place of law in viable human societies as a basking shark mother). Of course the same attitudes to property rights are taken by adults, of both genders, and all are based on the 'apparent' anonymity of the use of technology to steal other people's property. What the current UTube case is all about is, obviously, not known to some Australian reader of a brief news report. However what I understand from it is that copyright owners are moving to change their 'point of attack' from the users of various P2P and other protocols to steal copyright material to the network owners who allow the data involved to move through their networks. Exetel, probably, has stricter views on property theft than any other Australian ISP. We do, as a matter of course, pass on all allegations of copyright infringement notices to the end user noted in the infringement and we do block the user's internet access until they use the facilites we provide to them to assure us that: a) they deny the allegation b) they have contacted the writer of the infringement notice c) they, in error, allowed some copy right material to be down loaded but have now removed it. That process is fully automated, both from Exetel's side and also from the customer's side and has been in place for several years (I forget exactly when we competed the full automation of this process). As far as I know, NO other ISP conforms as strictly to what is required under Australian law and ethical business practices as Exetel and its owners do. So far so good - we have made a 'virtue' out of the commercial necessity of protecting our own financial investments and the fact that, as a small company, we don't have the financial and legal resources to deal with some expensive law suit mounted by an entity that does have much larger financial and legal resources - such as Telstra or Optus or any other huge company such as in the current US case - Yahoo/UTube. (though come to think of it Telstra and concern for other people's rights......) What the US case seeks to do is to make Google (the owner of the network) responsible for the content of the network which is very similar to the ComCen and PeopleTelecom cases in Australia (where those companies 'knowingly' hosted facilities for distributing copyright material illegally). Fair enough - if that's what is happening but, obviously it isn't as understood by Google and UTube. Time will tell. Of more concern to small companies such as Exetel is a similar change of 'tactics' by the senders of copyright infringement notices to Austraian ISPs. As well as the specific "on this date/time IP xxxxx downloaded/uploaded title xyz" notification there now appears generalised accusations of "knowingly colluding" by "taking no overall action" when "you know this is happening" type accusations - these have not been seen, at least as far as I'm aware, before. Now, I may well be over tired and mentally and physically run down at the end of a very demanding year - and desperately in need of a holiday, but it appears to me that the ''days of blatant copyright theft" by every kid and adult of dubious morals via the anonymity of P2P is coming to an end. Sure, these individuals will continue to steal other people's property using technology. However, ISPs, around the world, will become more, rather than less, involved in removing their abilities to do that. If the copyright owners can succeed in establishing the legal precedent that "knowing that certain signature taffic (i.e. BitTorrent) is more likely than not to be used to steal copyright material then the current P2P 'scenario' will change dramatically. The danger in this scenario to small, yet not tiny, ISPs like Exetel is that we are very vulnerable in this situation and are far more threatened by it than larger ISPs. I didn't want something like this to worry about right at this moment. Friday, July 4. 2008Tassie - Is It Still The Same Place......John Linton ......it was in 1996...or has it drifted in to the orbit of some other planet? I've mentioned before that Exetel is having difficulties obtaining realistically priced transit bandwidth between Tasmania and Victoria so that we can commission a Hobart, and possibly, Launceston PoP. With the completion of the ACT PoP early next week (The last of the physical 'outside links' was completed yesterday) we have completed the 'Australia Wide' network that we need to deliver a higher level of business and HSPA services in FY2009 as well as reducing some latencies for the customers outside NSW when they access sites within their State or Territory. The problem is, at least right at this moment, is that Telstra is the only provider of Bass Strait transit and the prices charged for access (at least in the low quantities that Exetel's user's require) means that we could not possibly do anything but lose a lot of money if we had to pay the prices that Telstra charge. Telstra, publicly, cite "capacity" has been reached on their current, two, cables and they have no plans to build another cable as "it can't be justified". Actually I've lost track of the reasons that appear in the press every so often and I've never been able to follow the logic that as there is no more capacity there is also no more demand. Poor old Tassie has declined in "Telstra importance" in a major, major way since the early days of internet provision in Australia as this 'blast from the past' clearly shows: http://web.archive.org/web/19961129231438/telstra.net/map.html As you can see - Tasmania was ranked the same as Perth in getting Telstra internet access in 1996 so much so that out of the total of, the massive, 48 mbps of international bandwidth - Tassie users had one twelfth of the total. I wonder what percentage of the total they have today? My guess would be that it would most likely be around 0.1%; a drop of 40 times in 12 years. Clearly the only solution is for the Tasmanian Government, with Federal funding assistance, to lay another cable and make it available to whoever they wanted to at prices that make normal commercial sense - not "Telstra gouge every last cent via monopoly" sense. Oops - but didn't they just do that? Yes they did - sort of - one of these 'industry participation' things that just never seem to work out the way a government wants them to. There's now a brand new cable still sitting idle since 2004 called BassLink: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basslink which has a dark fibre core just waiting to be used - and has been since 2004. The trouble is the nasty Singaporean company that ponied up the money to buy the cable (both the electricity carrying capacity and the data capacity) thinks that Telstra's monopoly pricing is just dandy and is OK with them. The Tassie government is very miffed about this and hence the cable has been idle waiting resolution as to who has what rights to charge what for what and in the mean time Telstra remains the only game in town - I mean the only game in Bass Strait transit and transferring a byte of data over Bass Strait costs as much as it did back in 1996 when this was the 'new dawn' for Telstra's (monopoly) internet access pricing: http://web.archive.org/web/19961129231504/telstra.net/pricelist.html How would you, as a residential user, like to be paying those prices today eh? However, believe it or not, those were the prices being paid by ISPs to Telstra in 1996 to run their businesses and if you think bandwidth limits are tiny today and speeds are sub-standard then you either weren't round using the internet in 1996 or, mercifully, you have chosen to forget the experience. Unfortunately, while those of us who live 'on the Australian mainland' have benefited from competition in the supply of ISP services poor old Tassie is still locked up in the Telstra monopoly and, while perhaps not paying 1996 IP prices, is certainly paying ten times more than any other part of Australia. There is about to be (and that has been said to me so many times over the past few months that I've lost count) a 'switch on' of the BassLink data service and the pricing is only 3 or 4 times what the price of back hauling data from Perth to Sydney currently is. I haven't seen the 'final' pricing and I certainly haven't seen a believable (SLA based) 'switch on' date but it appears to be closer than it was. So perhaps Exetel will get it's Hobart PoP operating before we're able to supply HSPA to Tasmanian customers - it's too hard to pick at the moment. The real solution is for the Tassie Government to build, yet another, cable and ensure that Tasmanians get internet services at the same prices as all other Australians - oops - I forgot - Crazy Kevin and Stupider Stephen are in the process of doing that by the end of 2008. Thursday, July 3. 2008Why Doesn't Exetel Give 150 gb Free In Off Peak?John Linton One of the nice things about operating forums where 'decision makers' read and respond to comments, questions and suggestions made by customers is that a small company like Exetel gets a stream of ideas that have not occurred to us and over the time we've been in business we have implemented many hundreds of the suggestions we've received. Apart from the 'public posts' many customers take the opportunity of sending their detailed thoughts on subjects via 'private message' to one or more Exetel personnel forum members pointing out how competitors appear, or actually do, offer better options than Exetel does. Over the last few weeks there have been an increase in people asking why Exetel 'limits' its off peak allowances to "a mere 48 gb" when other ISPs are offering over 100 gb and some are offering 200 gb of off peak allowance. I constantly look at the actual costings of our ADSL plans and continually try and improve them whenever Exetel gets better buy pricing from the suppliers who contribute to the costs of providing an ADSL service. From its beginning, Exetel has always offered more for less than any other ISP who has stayed in business and it has always surprised me when someone points out that another ISP is providing better/more/cheaper broadband services than Exetel does. There is no doubt that all of Exetel's larger competitors have lower costs of bandwidth and base ports than Exetel does due to either their much larger buying power (based on their much larger size) or their deployment of their own lower cost infrastructures in the case of ADSL2 services. It's also equally true that the same larger competitors have far less efficient operational processes than Exetel and, in the case of the public companies a primary need to deliver sufficiently 'fat' profits to reward their shareholders with a sensible commercial return on their investments. Over the time that Exetel has been in business I've never seen any of the larger competitors ever offer a lower cost solution than Exetel has with a few exceptions that are run as 'promotions'. The facts about providing 'huge' data allowances (such as 150 gb in 'off peak') for 'free' is not something that Exetel can do because there is no such thing as 'free' in commercial life - all there ever exists is marketing 'smoke and mirrors' and a whole lot of small print. The cost, in terms of bandwidth only, to Exetel of delivering 1 gb of data has reduced quite a lot over the past 12 months and is now at its lowest ever point in our brief 'commercial life" - however it certainly isn't "free". It's a little more difficult to determine the exact cost of delivering data today because of two things: 1) The caching engines from Akamai and PeerApp deliver different levels of data at different times of the day 2) The Net Enforcer constrains P2P speeds at different times of day (all data is delivered but only when bandwidth isn't being used by other protocols) However the base equation remains the same - cost of ingress/egress bandwidth plus cost of customer connectivity bandwidth divided by number of gb able to be delivered. The peak demand for bandwidth usage is from 8 pm to 11.30 pm each week night and that is the time frame that we address in provisioning bandwidth on a contentionless basis. The costs of doing this are set out below: A) Ingress/Egress IP Bandwidth Our IP bandwidth costs Exetel less than $200 per mbps for Southern Cross/AJC etc which based on peak time (12 noon to 12 midnight usage) costs Exetel around $1.50 per gb delivered in 'peak time' if only Carrier bandwidth was used. Cached bandwidth from PeerApp costs us less than $100.00 per mbps which costs 75 cents per gb. Cached bandwidth from Akamai costs us less than 50 cents per gb. Bandwidth available from PIPE/WAIX/Etc costs us less than 25 cents per gb Given the 'mix' of bandwidth sources used on any average week night the actual ingress/egress IP cost is something close to $1.00 per gb in the noon to midnight period and $0.00 in the midnight to noon period. (Based on absorbing all IP costs over a twelve hour period when you want to ensure no contention). B) Customer Connectivity Bandwidth All Exetel customers are connected to Exetel's PoPs via infrastructures provided by Telstra, Optus and AAPT. There used to be major differences between the charges made by the three different carriers but they are now pretty similar. Taking in to consideration the interstate back hauls that we have now put in place ourselves the cost of each gb delivered to a customer over these infrastructures (again amortising the full cost over the noon to midnight period) is around 35 cents per gb with zero cost incurred from Midnight to Noon. So, allowing for GST on top of the 'raw' charges, the cost to Exetel (of bandwidth only - not taking in to account routers/servers/rack space, network personnel, support personnel costs) to deliver one gb of data to a customer is around $1.50 during the noon to midnight period. Exetel has over 3 gigabytes of IP and the same amount of Customer connectivity band width which can be considered to be available at no charge for twelve hours each day - in other words it's 'free' but only in terms of how I'm attempting to explain this scenario. This amount of bandwidth (divided by number of customers) is very, very generous and is unlikely to be available from ANY other ISP.
However you don't have to be very mathematically skilled to work out that 2.5 gb (on a twelve hour time frame) allows a theoretical 150 gb 'free allowance (at 100% utilisation for the full twelve hours) to be provided to a mere 5,000 users. If you cut the off peak allowance from Exetel's 12 hours then the number of customers to whom the 'free' 150 gb allowance can be provided is proportionally less. Again, if the whole 12 hour period isn't used at 100% capacity then the number of users also declines in a linear fashion. Exetel, which is a pioneer of large (or what I used to think of as large) off peak download allowances has never used more than 60% of the off peak time capacity since March 2004. What obviously does occur, unless the ISP uses P2P to 'smooth the demand', is that at the start of the 'free period' too many 150 gb free people try and use their allowance and the bandwidth can't cope with it making them unhappy that "I'm not getting what I paid for". So for Exetel's broadband users there is, in provable terms of the daily, weekly and monthly MRTG reports, more than enough bandwidth for every user to use whatever part of their 48 gb off peak allowance they choose to use with more than 40% spare capacity. However that would not be the case if the allowance was 150 gb and therefore Exetel can't afford to provide such an amount (and, in my opinion based on 15 years experience of providing IP services) neither can any other ISP - the math just doesn't work. It's all marketing smoke and mirrors aimed at the gullible and those who can't count. Wednesday, July 2. 2008Some Types Of People Who Read Blogs........John Linton .......appear to have serious psychiatric problems. I am reaching the end of the 365 days of writing this daily rambling of what I'm involved with each day of my business life and have nearly won my bet - only the logistical difficulties (and the lack of understanding of a traveling companion) from July 14th to July 26th stand in the way of 'victory'. When I was first appraised of why anyone in their right mind should attempt to write a regular blog on the boring aspects of the operations of a business the benefits (to the business) were very clearly set out and very well argued by the writers of the two articles an old friend gave me but I couldn't see how this could happen for Exetel. I can say, after 11+ months of writing a daily blog, that each of the seven benefits: 1) Increase in sales across all products/services have materialised for Exetel and for me personally in exactly the ways, and the quanta, stated in the articles. It has been a very interesting, and for Exetel a very rewarding, result for a minimal effort. The rewards are so large and so measurable that I still have trouble accepting that someone, actually two people, in 'academia' could provide such valuable guidance on such a difficult to grasp set of commercial concepts. In purely monetary terms Exetel is better off financially to the tune of North of $A2 million and that amount is directly quantifiable and is conservative. So, my advice to anyone who runs a business, or someone who would like the business they are associated with to do better financially and in many other ways is 'invest' in the 20 minutes it takes daily to write a few words about any aspects of your business that are current - I can personally add my 'testimony' to the claims made by other people that you'll never make a better time/financial return 'investment'. My blog is not 'advertised' in any way other than providing a link half way down an 'inside' page of the Exetel web site and this conforms to the advice I was given that absolutely no 'promotion' is required for the blog to achieve the stated benefits. It does take time for the 'readership' to grow and even more time for the 'correct' readership to grow but it did happen for me in the time frames suggested and the 'results' also happened within the suggested time frames. The one down side of writing a blog that is left 'open' for comments and questions by the readers of the blog (which, in my opinion is essential to get the most benefits) is that you have to read some 'communications' that are written by psychotics who sometimes manage to pack a really surprising amount of 'hatred' in to a few sentences - and this has happened on a linearly increasing basis over the past 11+ months. Lunacy is clearly on the rise in Australia based on the sort of communications I have been receiving. I seriously wonder at what state of mental deterioration these people must have reached to actually bother to read what some obscure individual writes on an obscure web site more than once as what I write seems to so deeply offend such people. I would have thought any, even relatively sane person, who found a writer on an obscure web site to be annoying would exercise the simple decision not to read what was written after the first time. Not the case with some of the psychos who clutter my inbox - they seem to read every word I write in depth and then write in abusive detail about every aspect of what has been written embellished with scathing appraisals of every aspect of my physical and mental attributes. Based on some of the emails I've received it seems that they are badly in need of remedial English schooling and a much better vocabulary as their successive emails are drearily repetitive (why do they find it difficult to spell even their swear words correctly?). I didn't bother to either keep the emails from such people or a record of the number and 'classification' of the content in the early stages but after the volume and frequency began to increase I kept a spreadsheet of these poisonous communications from December of 2007 onwards. Some of the 'statistics' from this record show: 1. an 'incidence' of 5 per week in November increasing, almost linearly, to 25 a week in the week ending 29/6/08. 2. an increase in repeat senders (more than 3 'hate mails' per month per sender) from none in December 2007 to 6 in June 2008 (one demented soul has written a vitriolic assessment of my morals, ethics and stupidity each day except Saturdays since February 2008) 3. it's impossible to be sure but over 50% of these 'hate' missives appear to be written by 'employees' of other ISPs 4. it appears that 50% are written by people for whom English is a second language 5. 75% of repeat writers include increasingly vituperative accusations of 'cowardice' on my part from not allowing their 'comments' to appear on the blog I think I'm a fairly thick skinned person who has dealt with 'anonymous' abuse sensibly for a long time and has never been affected in any way by the sort of people who write such things other than to marvel at why they waste their time doing it. However, perhaps because I'm very tired at the end of another very difficult and demanding year and I am certainly physically and mentally 'run down', I am becoming 'irked' by some of the more persistent 'serial abusers' and the hysterical level of abuse they resort to. So it's the only down side I have found in writing a daily rambling which is completely overshadowed by the enormous benefits of making the effort to set aside 20 or so minutes each day to express your views on something(s) that are in the forefront of your mind at the time of writing. My advice to anyone involved in running a business - write a blog on a consistent basis and watch your business significantly improve. |
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