John Linton
.....All our problems and costs we'll leave be-hind us there
And I know that you'll find, there'll be peace of mind
When we live in a world of our own (apologies to The Seekers)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S9oaXzrsV3Q
.....so when you actually come to think about it - why do you need a Telstra land line to provide a broadband service? You don't - isn't it just another 'legacy' that has suited Telstra and has never, until now been challenged by Telstra wannabes, to extend the, what appear to be, considerable profits it makes from the 'sun set' years of a hundred year old (based) copper network. It's very useful and its very convenient but because it's controlled by a monopoly it's very expensive. So I started my List A yesterday with the first entry being that as long as Exetel based any service on any infrastructure 'provided' by Telstra we would never be able to succeed in building a viable business.
Easy enough to determine - so many other companies who buy various services from Telstra reached that conclusion a long time ago and have spoken publicly about it for many years. Optus, AAPT, iPrimus, iinet, Internode, TPG 'spokespeople' have all made reference to this scenario in announcing their own versions of fibre, cable, satellite and, more recently, ADSL2 builds of their own to either eliminate or reduce their dependence on Telstra. The only major successes have been the mobile networks built by Optus, Vodafone and '3' and it took a long time for those to reach 'equality' with Telstra and they suffered for many years from the disparity in user numbers via the 'inter-carrier' charging regime.
Your own ADSL2 DSLAM network doesn't really address the problem (you have to rent Telstra 'real estate' to house your equipment, you have to rent Telstra copper lines from the exchange to the end user, you also may have some fairly difficult and time consuming operational 'hoops' to jump through) and no matter what you do the end user still also pays Telstra if they want to make land line telephone calls (or pay Telstra via the ISP for that privilege).
So - any version of ADSL2 is still far more expensive than it should be when provided by a non-Testra ISP or communictions company - at least that's the way it looks to me. But why is there this 'hang up' on providing broadband ONLY via a network owned and controlled by Telstra? Why is that the "safety" of a Telstra land line for 'emergencies' such a major 'stumbling block' to removing Telstra's charging regimes from every deployment of broadband? In the 1970s it was called FUD (Fear - Uncertainty and Doubt spread by the incumbent dominator in a particular market. I suspect it's still FUD.
So here's my current thoughts to deal with List A - Point 1:
1) Use HSPA for 256 kbps ADSL1 users
a) 90% of Exetel's current 256/64 kpbs users download less than 1 gb a month
b) HSPA is 2/3 the price of ADSL1 at less than 1 gb download per month (maximum $20.00 instead of minimum $30.00)
c) Replace land line telephone calls with VOIP - save 50%, at least, of current call charges (10 cent local calls and 10 cent STD calls 20 cent per minute calls to mobiles)
d) Cancel land line rental (save $19.90 to $30.00+)
e) Replace land line with mobile 'standby' service at a cost of $10.00 tops including free hand set.
f) Amend the web site along the lines that any sensible user would be crazy not to replace their 256/64 kbps service with an HSPA service that is so much cheaper and probably 6 times faster.
g) We have removed the 256/64 ADSL1 services from our web site pricing sections and replaced the 'old' pricing with this statement:
"If you are considering an ADSL plan at 256 kbps download speeds we believe you would be much better off considering an Exetel HSPA plan that will give you speeds between 512 kbps up to over 1,000 kbps and will cost you less than an ADSL service for low download usage. To see whether an HSPA plan will suit you please click here"
h) Contact our current ADSL1 users who download less than 2 gb per month and appraise them of the compelling reasons why they might like to consider moving from ADSL1 to a much faster and much cheaper service.
What we learn from these 'initiatives' we will then use to address the 512/128 kbps users and 1500/256 kbps users.I think it is probably best if we just discontinue offering the telstra 8192/384 service to new users and use ADSL2 as the alternative.
That's as far as I got yesterday in 're-constructing' Exetel's business plan to allow Exetel to retain more control of any future business it might be able to do and to simplify the relationships it has to 'manage'.
Our aim would be, one way or another, not to supply any 256/64 kbps ADSL1 services by some time in early 2009 by replacing them with much faster and much lower cost alternative services.