John Linton
We expect to start 'customer' testing of the new HSPA service next week - at least in terms of establishing 'benchmark' speeds and latencies around Australia and determining what the issues in terms of gaming and VoIP and other applications might be. We have started to put the HSPA details up on the Exetel web site and will add the rest of the 'content' by the end of next week. At least the coverage 'maps' are now in place and the first two plan prices.
The testing we will do will be aimed at three major tasks:
1) Establishing the likely performance of VoIP over the service in areas where 3G is available
2) Determining latency impacts on local gaming servers
3) Seeing how the iPhone handles VoIP and SMS via broadband compared to a standard mobile service
The third task came from a 'blog reader's suggestion' yesterday - "if Exetel isn't going to offer a mobile voice service will it offer a VoIP service". Until that suggestion was made I was in despair about how we would be able to compete with the "570 minutes for $0.00" type offers from the Carriers and their dealers - the mobile voice wholesale pricing offered to Exetel by Optus is an embarrassment in terms of the mobile call costs expected by an end user (which is why we have always used Vodafone for our mobile services - at least their rates allow us to be competitive).
We can, I think, make an iPhone data offer that is very attractive to iPhone users. We can also offer a very attractive SMS (via broadband) service as part of the data service - I think 5 cents for an Australian destination SMS of 160 characters is far better than any mobile based SMS service I am aware of.
The problem is a mobile outbound service (obviously inbound isn't a problem).
We can't offer outbound voice calls using the wholesale rates Optus have provided to us at this time - they are just so ridiculously expensive it would kill the appeal of the service and we might as well forget about an HSPA service for a mobile phone user completely.
However, following that reader's suggestion, it would be a major benefit to be able to offer outbound calls via VoIP if we could make that happen in an easy to set up/use way - basically using one of the 'soft phone' implementations that the vast majority of PC VoIP users have used since VoIP first became avaialble. Many of the most popular 'soft phone' applicatons are now very, very feature 'rich' and are pretty much 'plug n play' in terms of installation and set up.
While I undersand the limitations of VoIP (and the particular difficulties of use where there is no 3G coverage) I can't help but conjure with the ability to compete with all the mobile cost based "free million minute" offers with a 10 cent unlimited time national calls , low cost calls to mobiles and very, very cheap international calls that are available via VoIP. (of course it helps that Exetel had the farsightedness to put in place its own SMS via Broadband and VoIP switches and connectivity a long time ago and therefore have the delivery, billing and programming capablities to integrate those services into a new 'platform').
We could beat the current offer by Virgin by a very long way using VoIP and SMS over broadband and have a very large amount of 'spare' money available to subsidise the cost of additional data that would allow us to also compete with the most aggressive data inclusion offerings currently beng offered by Three and Vodafone (and Optus for that matter). I hear, 'on the grape vine', that both Optus and Vodafone wil be introducing new plans in the very near future aiming at simialar markets to those Exetel had 'identified'. I suppose it was inevitable but I had hoped they would stay with their current pointless attempts at competing with ADSL for a bit longer - at least until we had been able to deliver pur planned HSPA services.
Of course, it may not work out as I would hope it would but we will do some extensive testing using iPhones over the next few weeks to determine exactly what can be sensibly achieved - particularly call quality in various coverages and, of course, ease of use. If it can be made to work well and easily - well the future suddenly looks very much brighter than I had ever thought it could.