John Linton's Personal Musings

John Linton

......God, I hope I've got this right......

Exetel has taken the first small steps aimed at more than doubling the 'size' of our very small company over the coming year or so. I have mentioned this before in terms of changing Exetel from a purely engineering company to become a more conventional sales and engineering entity by building a 'sales force' roughly equivalent in size to the current total number of employees (a little over 40 people if it all works out).

Our 'sales only via web site' processes have served us very well over the past five years and have allowed us to concentrate all of our very scarce 'management' resources on the engineering and administration processes that are the 'engine' and 'backbone' (to horribly mix metaphors) of any service business. For someone who has spent the vast majority of his commercial life in purely sales related activities and responsibilities the last five years of building automated process systems and exercising financial controls over a rapidly growing business has left no time for sales related activities which, to be quite honest, I hadn't really missed - until this week.

It was only this week when I fully turned my mind and most of my working days to the more detailed planning of how we could achieve a $A100 million annual sales target that I realised how much I enjoyed, and childish though it may seem, and was excited by 'talking sales' to prospective employees and how very 'proud' I was of what Exetel had actually achieved over the past five years and how compelling the 'story' was of the benefits to an end customer of our services, their low prices and the incredible efficiencies and competences of the systems and above everything else, the personnel, who deliver and support that array of services.

For the first time in many, many years I couldn't actually think (let alone type) fast enough to list the new ideas and tasks related to them that were 'spilling' out of my 'mind' at a furious rate. Now that may sound really stupid but selling is really 'liberating' particularly when you have spent 12 hours a day for over 1,900 consecutive days devoted to the fearsome slog of the nuts and bolts of building a business where no detail is too small not to catch your attention and then take your time to understand and address it.

The other great excitement you get from selling is in thinking about how to describe the advantages and realities of your services and your company and the intense pleasure that gives you if you have played a part in developing what you now try to describe to other people. Again - you are probably thinking - "how childish" - and you're probably right - though perhaps children do get more pleasure and enjoyment out of their days than financial controllers?

The other great pleasure, that I have been fortunate to have played a part in several times in the past, is recruiting/creating a sales force from 'scratch' and needing to do that from highly diverse resources and to know just how you need to plan ahead to make your initial personnel choices not only effective for the 'start up phase' but ensure they will develop in the ways they would need to develop through each of the subsequent phases and overcome the heart aches and disappointments that individuals within sales forces always go through. For me - a far more enjoyable version of chess where the fifteenth move is determined by the first and subsequent moves and you have to have that 'road map' in your head before making the first move.

Balancing the engineering and technical knowledge of a communications consultant with the self discipline and inter-personal skills of a highly successful communications sales person is not the easiest task to undertake. In fact, thinking back, it's quite difficult. But as with all difficult tasks it only requires breaking it down in to smaller achievable steps and then selecting the people able to reach the required end point from diverse starting points - and, of course, being able to design and manage that process.

We have appointed six people within Exetel to the three sales teams that will be responsible for meeting the different sales targets in our business plan for the remainder of FY2009 and then for FY2010 and have made the first job offer to an 'outside' person. Over the next two months or so we will add another 4 or 5 people in this initial phase and, depending on how successful the knowledge transfer processes work out, we will then add additional personnel at a rate of 4 a month for the balance of calendar 2009.

It will be a major challenge.

So - a start has been made to this complicated 18 month program and I feel more 'invigorated' than I have for quite a while....and not a little 'frightened'. 

John Linton

As the local teens brought up by parents bereft of any moral or ethical values continue to attempt to justify their theft of other people's properties and the lunatic Krudd and his stalking horse Stupid Stephen continue to try and find a way of appeasing religious loonies with their net censorship proposals (and not forgetting the "NBN" proposals) its hard to think that there would be an alleged government anywhere else on the planet with even less of a clue about the future of communications technology than Australia's.

But wait...there are other Labor parties around the globe that rival Australia's in technical ineptitude if not in sheer stupidity and among their technically laughable plans there are now the signs of very, very real crackdowns on internet piracy. So have a read of this (get over the concept of 2 mbps broadband) and read on to the Irish and UK net piracy initiatives which are actually very real and simply the next step along the way to processes that were being enacted while I was in the UK last August:

http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/industry_sectors/media/article5611425.ece

Doubtless iinet are into their third $A100,000 of legal 'advice' by now in their law suit to deny they overtly encouraged copy right theft and will spend over $A1 million before the case is settled one way or another but it seems that both the parliaments of the UK and Ireland (and it is a safe assumption that these actions will be duplicated around the EU) are making the iinet lawsuit redundant by legislating way past the 'burden of proof' assumptions of Australia's larcenous down loaders.

"....hours after the British announcement, Ireland’s Eircom announced that it would disconnect users who download music illegally from the Web in a settlement that is believed to be the first of its kind in the world. It said it would isolate people who continued to download illegally after receiving two warnings."

Now this isn't a "proposal" - this has been passed in to law and it has been done because it specifically accepts that copyright theft is endemic and must be stopped. None of this "day in court and only if found guilty before a jury of your peers" nonsense - two allegations (in the legislated form) and "no internet for you any more you thief". That's the " hop and the step" and its now only a "jump" away from a "National Register Of Thieves Names/Addresses/Phone Numbers/Driving Licenses/Whatever" that will ensure the designated thieves will never be eligible to get internet again!??

....and the UK, and the rest of the EU, may well go exactly the same way ........and Australia?......well....who knows?

So while iinet is "flying the flag" for (and one would assume with the full 'moral' - what a laugh - and financial support of the other ethically bankrupt drones in the AIA it associates with) in its own personal, law suit it may well be the case that any result that may be achieved has already been 'short circuited' before any court determination is reached in Australia.

Now, this is not the BS that continues to surround the issue of copyright theft in the Australia media and chatter sites. This is legislation in a democracy and, as I said over a year ago, because so much money is being stolen the copyright owners will find (and may well now have found) the way of preventing the thefts. No nonsense about "my legal rights to steal whatever I like" - the legal rights of the copyright owners have been enshrined in law (just as every other person or entity's rights are protected by legislation) and the methodology for protecting those rights is spelled out.

No 'blurring' - no doubt - no whining about TV scheduling - no 'bush lawyer advice' - just a democracy stating the bleeding obvious via legislation for the benefit of people who have no moral or ethical basis for their lives - "you will be punished for taking goods without paying for them".

Perhaps the copyright owners (including Microsoft) have finally found the right approach to protecting their property? They have directly gone to the governments of law abiding countries and said words to the effect of:

"Either legislate against copyright thieves or we pull out our investments in your country which should be a 'big help' to you in the recession (Microsoft is huge in Ireland) and ban the import of our products - see how you like operating your government and businesses without Windows, Word and Excel and watch a television with no US content."

(the above is pure conjecture on my part as I have absolutely no knowledge of how it actually came about).

It will be interesting to see what transpires here.

John Linton

The third of the top three US telephone cariers filed their quarterly report with the NYSE yesterday:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123307214837119815.html

re-iterating the messages from Verizon and Sprint's filings - that the only growth is in mobile data and wire line services continue to decline.

The US is a truly deregulated communications market in most realistic senses of that word with 30 years of competition in the wire line provisioning to end users so there isn't, as in Australia, a monopoly wire line provider that has artificially continued to keep the line rental and call charges at exorbitant levels simply "because it could". Nevertheless the sheer 'weight' of technology progress makes it inevitable that wire line based services simply don't 'cut it' in the 21st century even when decades of fierce competition deliver as low priced service as exist throughout the US.

In Australia, Telecom/Telstra had no competition and for all of its existence operated totally inefficiently and with poor to very poor to appallingly bad management (something that remains virtually unchanged today except you can add "even more vastly overpaid" to the other string of adjectives describing Teltsra's operational performances in every area of wire line service delivery.

So Australia only has 'world class' communications in two areas:

1) Mobile telephony

2) Business data services

and the ONLY reason for this is that in those two areas there is competition from other companies that have invested in their own infrastructures that run (end to end) without paying Telstra's exhorbitant prices for one millimeter of cable/wire/fibre nor use one square centimeter of any Telstra 'real estate'.

What happens to a service when there is more than one supplier and those suppliers have determined their own costs by investing in their own facilities to provide the services and Telstra isn't involved?

It means the service is offered at a fraction of the cost the identically specified service from Telstra is offered.

This has been happening for around 20 years now and it must be obvious to anyone who spends even a few moments looking at comparative pricing of, say, business data services, that if Telstra is involved in ANY way in the supply of a service then the cost of that service is much higher than it is anywhere else in the world.

The overwhelming reason why HSPA will replace wire line based broad band services is that Telstra is not involved in ensuring the pricing of those service is as high as only a monopoly, with its massive operational and management inefficiencies, chooses to make them to continue to over reward its grossly inefficient and incompetent management.

Telstra would, and does, argue that they are hugely efficient with fantastically competent management who continually exceed their very toughly set KPIs.

If this is the case how is it that where other communications companies offer the identical (non-Telstra wire line based)services over their own infrastructures the price of the competitive services is seldom less than half of the Telstra price and often far less?

The only reason offered by Telstra that is hard to determine is because Telstra's pricing has to include "averaging' as it has to offer the same services in 'regional/rural Australia?

That doesn't seem to apply to mobile and now HSPA. So this means that, assuming Telstra's argument is true, that wire line services simply can't be offered at a reasonable price and therefore wire line services (including ADSL) will not survive as offerings beyond the time HSPA is able to be delivered in 'quantity' and at 10 mbps plus speeds throughout Australia.

I looked at these scenarios some 4 years ago and, while I would be the first to admit that my technical knowledge is slight to the point of non-existence my business knowledge is only very slight, the proverbial 'blind Freddie' could see that as long as a monopoly incumbent is involved in pricing only its over paid directors and managers will benefit - everyone else in Australia will pay through the nose so that the Telstra money trough continues to be full to the brim to continue to make mediocre employees wealthy and to ensure they never actually have to do a day's work to accumulate that wealth.

It was concomitantly clear that only different technologies that ran over non-Telstra owned infrastructures could change that situation and that no amount of ACCC activity and other companies basing services on anything owned and priced by Telstra could never deliver sensibly priced services to Australians.

So in my limited mind, some four years ago, I came to the conclusion that the then sparsely deployed data technology then emerging using 2G/3G/4G/LTE or whatever would, because they used already established mobile telephone networks, would in fact be the real answer to offering communications services in Australia that didn't depend, in any way. on Telstra and nor could they become the Telstra monopoly replacement because there was, at least, three companies that would deploy the new technology.

Only with strong, independently owned infrastructures, can there be competition that will produce realistic end user prices - wire line based products priced by the Telstra monopoly can never meet that basic criterion. 

ERGO: HSPA will replace ADSL.

Telstra Delenda Est.(continued apologies to Scipio the Elder)

.

John Linton

I was going to include the following observations in yesterday's entry but it was already too long for ...."and another thing"...

The points in yesterday's entry were reinforced by two separate articles in the WSJ I read earlier this morning about the contrasting 'destinies' of two huge US carriers (one who has embraced data over mobile and one who hasn't):

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123304191981419017.html

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123297673176315313.html

Verizon's 'partnership' with Vodafone has seen it power ahead in both customer acquisition and profit  (despite falling wire line revenues) whereas Sprint/Nextel (once the innovation king of US communications) is facing massive customer erosion by retaining its reliance on wire line revenues for too long. They just provide an interesting, not by any means definitive, counterpoint to my statements about why HSPA may well replace broad band over wire line:

It's the cost - stupid.

ADSL in Australia carries this massive "tax burden" called paying for the Telstra ULL installation and then monthly access cost in an era where mobile telephony has made wire lines for private users almost an anachronism. The increasing popularity of "Naked" ADSL (Exetel sells more naked ADSL2 than ADSL2 that includes either our or someone else's wire line rental at 2:1 and continuing to increase rapidly) shows how private users are increasingly demonstrating that they have no use for a 'conventional' wire line telephone service preferring to use their mobile or VoIP (or both) to make and receive telephone calls.

That must be blindingly obvious to everyone within all Australia carriers and ISPs - it doesn't seem to be disputable.

However even "Naked" ADSL continues to carry the cost of the ULL installation and rental which is a significant component of the "Naked" ADSL cost. HSPA, of course, gets rid of the telephone line installation cost and the monthly rental cost - which costs, depending on who you believe, around $16.00 a month from Telstra plus whatever mark up the wholesale customer puts on that charge. (of course Telstra/BigPond doesn't offer "Naked" ADSL2 for reasons that anyone with a few 'grey cells' can probably work out for themselves).

So wire line broad band is 'taxed' in Australia by Telstra for providing ADSL over a medium that was designed for something else which is no longer needed by the end user. Locked in to an historical time warp forever if Telstra has its way. HSPA removes this Telstra tax along with removing the artificially high cost of making telephone calls over the Telstra telephone network.

Now add to the unwanted cost components a few other little 'presents' from your local monopoly carrier such as the fact that Telstra don't belong to the 'SSS no downtime supplier change' process (meaning that to move away from a Telstra ADSL2 service is a major inconvenience) and you begin to see how 'clunky'  a broad band service over a monopoly's resold network has become. Add the fact that some proportion of telephone lines, because of age, distance or other shortcomings can't deliver much above 3 mbps over an ADSL2 service plus a further, growing, percentage will never be able to do that because they are on 'RIMs' and you begin to see that running broad band over copper is far from an ideal solution in terms of either speed or cost - add a monopoly pricing regime and it's absolutely no way to go.

And then........ but like yesterday you either get the point or adding to your personal logical thought process isn't going to be useful.

A 'go anywhere' (which includes changing addresses which almost half of Exetel's users have done over the past 3 years) broad band service that eliminates the cost of a new installation of a land line and then the monthly rental that you don't need is becoming the MAJOR plus for an increasing percentage of HSPA buyers. The fact that your broad band also travels with you if you have a lap top has always been an obvious advantage.

I haven't used anything but VoIP to make land line calls for over two years (either at home or the office) and I haven't used anything but VoIP to make calls from my mobile since we introduced the Exetel HSPA service. I understand I work in 'the industry' and have readily available technical support to deal with my technical inadequacies but it's only a matter of time before the advantage of a 10 cent un-timed call to anywhere in Australia overcomes even the most technophobic hold out's obduracy and/or fear of change. So once that happens the price of broad band can fall to real levels because Telstra is eliminated from the price process:

1) Getting rid of land line rental saves between $20 and $30+ a month

2) Getting rid of land line means no distance/line quality limitations

3) Getting rid of land line gets rid of Telstra's control over pricing allowing ISPs to truly offer different services

4) HSPA will be available to 98% plus of Australian households

5) HSPA speeds will be more than sufficient for 95% of adult user categories (pirates and games players will not use the service)

6) HSPA pricing (minus the land line cost) will be lower than ADSL2

As the speed of HSPA increases and the data costs fall there is little doubt, in my mind, that HSPA will replace something like 60% of the current ADSL1 and ADSL2 user base in Australia within 2 years.

John Linton

I have been asked this question on an increasing number of occasions since Exetel has made no 'moves' to offer ADSL2 via the Telstra network as some other ISPs have done as the two issues appeared to be linked in some of our customer's minds. The decision not to attempt to negotiate an extension of Exetel's current Telstra Wholesale contract for the supply of ADSL1 customer connectivity to supply ADSL2 had nothing to do with our views on the likely future of HSPA - the two 'decisions' were entirely separate.

We decided not to provide ADSL2 via Telstra because we didn't see where we could add any value to that service and it would therefore breach our base reason to be in business to produce a 'me too' offering that was no different to those already offered by BigPond and the 'independent' ISPs that had signed extensions of their ADSL1 contracts. With 5 (or whatever the exact number of companies it actually is) all offering the Telstra service from the same exchanges what possible value could there be in adding a sixth or seventh or however many will eventually provide that service?

Now you may, quite rightly, point out that Exetel already offer ADSL1 based on Telstra's network so that/those statement(s) is/are contradictory. True enough - but when we started providing ADSL1 services some five years ago the 'rules' were very different and it was, relatively, easy for us to see that we, as a start up company, could buy at Telstra's ridiculously high prices and still differentiate the end service over time sufficiently to make a relatively clear cut set of service advantages. We were in fact able to do that over the first two years but then progressively lost that ability as Telstra Wholesale firstly changed its top management and then 'elasticised' its pricing parameters to the companies with which we competed.

If I had known then what subsequently became the case I would never have signed the original ADSL1 contract and would have approached the communications marketplaces very differently and with very different services and products. However they are mistakes of the past that I made with the knowledge (or as it subsequently turned out - the lack of knowledge) I had at that time and that mistake can just be added to a long list of mistakes I have made throughout my career.

So, Exetel's decision not to sell Telstra's ADSL2 was based on the information we had at the time, a few months ago, and our desire not to further entangle ourselves with a supplier whose CEO's publicly expressed view is that "wholesale customers are parasites". Not a lot of dignity in metaphorically 'tugging your forelock' and kow-towing to people who regard you with such overt contempt and disgust while taking huge amounts of money from you - pretty demeaning when you think about it.

Will HSPA replace ADSL2 as the broadband of choice throughout Australia?

Almost certainly not at the 'higher end' user level.

Almost certainly at the 'lower end' user level........with a couple of, perhaps three, provisos.

Currently, Optus HSPA network delivers an average of around 1.5 mbps down in many areas of Australia and Optus continues to increase the coverage continuously. Over the next 'little while' it will become pretty safe to say that 'most' areas of Australia will get 2 mbps plus down and somewhere close to 1 mbps up as Optus increases the overall base technology to 7.2/1.1. (at our North Sydney office we can currently get better than 4 mbps down and 1.1 mbps up).

Far more than 60% of Exetel's regional and rural users have ADSL1 at speeds of 1500/256 or less and they average using less than 2 gb of data downloads a month. Now it's certainly true that Telstra targeted these customers over the past two years offering them ADSL2 at heavily discounted prices via their never ending succession of "special promotions" and we have certainly lost a fair number of customers to those approaches. It's almost certainly going to be true as more ISPs sign up to re-sell Telstra's ADSL2 that we will lose some more - those that believe that "ADSL2 speeds" are of benefit to them.

We would believe that, if we could find a way of providing an HSPA modem at "no charge" (one of the provisos) then the majority of these current customers that have already rejected Telstra's targeting for over twelve months would be almost certain to accept an offer from Exetel of higher speed broad band at lower monthly charges while keeping all of their current Exetel broad band add-ons.

If those same customers could bring themselves to 'trust' VoIP and get rid of their current telephone number (the other proviso) then they could add the compelling additional benefit of eliminating the current cost of their telephone land line and the undoubtedly rip off telephone call charges that go with it.

Currently Exetel pay far too much for HSPA data to allow this scenario to be put into effect for services above 10 gb per month. We would expect that, over the coming 6 or so months that HSPA data costs will fall but we can't begin to estimate by how much. The only reason that we expect them to fall is that we have firm pricing for HSPA data in the EU which is about one third of what we currently pay to Optus and that was before the current recession hit Germany and the UK which has prompted fresh contact from our UK friends saying they can now offer better pricing than they did last August.

If Optus, or some other carrier prepared to offer Layer 2 HSPA, continues to develop the speeds and sensible capacities of HSPA beyond 7.2 mbps and continues to reduce the data costs (the third proviso) then the HSPA replacement of wire line broad band becomes ever more compelling and 'reaches further up' the layers of the current ADSL1 user base. HSPA never has to reach the theoretical "20 mbps" speed of ADSL2 because in regional and rural areas that will never be achieved but HSPA may well, in the not too distant future, actually deliver download speeds greater than those actually achieved by ADSL2. In the mean time speeds sufficient for streaming video are already 'nearly there' and will be a reality before mid 2009 in all probability.

I really do think that HSPA will replace wire line broad band for users of less than 10 gb a month everywhere in Australia over the next 17 months (given the 'provisos' I stated).

John Linton

We will have a family lunch at home later today which will be a token 'nod' to the meaning of the public holiday bestowed to mark the foundation of modern Australia. I will be the only migrant at that 'event' my father in law being a multi-generation Australian making my wife and our children even more multi-generational and my eldest son's girlfriend is of a similar background.

I was fortunate enough, though I'm not sure that was the way I saw it at the time, to arrive in this country with the equivalent of a few hundred dollars in 'my pocket' a few months short of my 18th birthday knowing no-one at all in this huge country and not even having any contacts to give some basic direction. I didn't see anything particularly wrong with that then and I'm certainly not complaining about it now (though I now, with children of my own, realise how very wrong it was).

I found myself a job (via the ads in the SMH) it was for a "Retail Executive Trainee" which actually meant sweeping the floors, cleaning the windows and moving boxes at Coles (it may have been Woolworths) at Maroubra Junction and after some weeks at the then equivalent of a back packer's hostel (but with much older people) moved in to share with three other males at a unit a hundred meters away from Maroubra Beach (also close to the bus stop that took me to my job) and again via the SMH ads.

So within a couple of weeks of arriving in Australia I had found PARADISE. I lived next to a great surf beach, I had three good new friends, I had a job, I was learning to surf and apart from teaching me to surf and drink endless middies at the Maroubra Bay Hotel my new friends introduced me to an endless stream of aspiring 'Gidgets' all of whom seemed to be blonde, tanned and to wear practically nothing (for those days) on and off the beach.

What more could any 17 year old immature male ask for?

Of course it couldn't last - and it didn't. Having to walk past the beach every week day morning to get a bus to go floor sweeping was too often interrupted by one or more of my new found friends waving to me saying there were better things to do on sunny summer's days - which of course was inarguable - and so after repeated warnings for non-attendance I was fired from my floor sweeping job as unreliable and inept (and who could argue with that assessment?). And so I found myself without a job, without any money and pretty soon, as I couldn't pay my share of the rent, without a roof over my head.

So my first, very painful lesson learned, I went on over the next few years learning ever more lessons, some even more painful, but also I saw more of my adopted country and fell ever more deeply in love with it - particularly in those days the towns and properties of the NSW Central West and its many, many very kind people who took pity on the skinny young boy with the odd accent who was so far from his family. Early on in my second job (which I managed to hold onto for much longer than my first job) I regularly visited Cooma then in the last days of the construction of the Snowy Mountains Scheme and due to hotel/motel accommodation shortages spent many nights in one or other of the dormitories built to house the workers on the scheme. Not a lot to do in those days at night in the SM so I sat around listening to the many, many stories of the backgrounds and hopes and dreams of the Yugoslavs, Poles, Hungarians, Italians, Greeks, Germans and almost every other European nationality that were working there. In their different ways they all had a similar/same view of Australia as I did and I still remember some of the people I met on those freezing nights where I learned to drink Slivovitz and its many variations (some of which may actually have been made in a commercial distillery somewhere where someone checked the alcohol content).

It went on from there - magical experiences with more than a leavening of 'disasters' but always more opportunities to help recover from the 'bad times'. And above everything else; always really great people everywhere I have ever been in Australia who give so much of themselves to others without considering that there would be any other way of living.

So my "love" of Australia increased each year I have lived here - not in the sentimental/sloppy ways of "bringing a tear to my eye" when I hear the national anthem (the words of Advance Australia Fair actually make me cringe) nor do I get "a thrill" when I see the "red roofs of Sydney from the air" or even the harbour bridge and opera house when returning from overseas. I certainly don't share the xenophobic hysteria which ruins (for me) watching most international sporting events in Australia (and which might well explain my passion for AFL since the VFL days?).

After living in Australia for over 40 years I do love the country in a deep and unshakable way and am very happy to do whatever I can (with my very limited abilities) to give something back to a country that has given me everything.

So, I will raise a glass later today, privately so as not to embarrass my family, to Australia and will continue to be grateful that I was lucky enough to 'find' such an extraordinarily wonderful place so early in my life.

So......To Australia - a truly great place to live and grow. 

John Linton

I am 100% in favour of conducting trials that prove there is no technical problem in banning access to a list of sites provided by the Federal Government. I can't imagine anything more valuable being done in Australia at this time.

I have, vaguely, followed the various outpourings of choleric drivel regurgitated by almost every section of the press since Krudd instructed Stupid Stephen to actually scrap the previous government's 'free content filter' and push on in to the brave new world of Labor internet censorship. Where even people as stupid as Krudd and co came up with this ludicrous view (other than as a quid pro quo with the religious loony in the Senate) defies rational explanation but, they continue to 'press on regardless' despite what appears to be almost unanimous condemnation from every person who puts fingers to keyboard.

So I thought I'd add my less than valuable insights as, personally, I think it's a very, very good idea for Stupid Stephen/Krudd to not ony pursue their trials but then proceed to implement their censorship and they shouldn't be prevented from going ahead by lying technical assertions from some ISPs.

Firstly let me debunk the stupid assertions by so many people from BigPond downwards who claim that the cost of blocking some finite number of web sites is somehow expensive or will slow the overall internet by some significant (I think I read somewhere some moron was suggesting 85%) amount. Such assertions are dishonest (anyone with a smidgeon of technical knowledge would know that is not the case) at best and just plain criminally wrong at worst.

The most obvious reasons why the people from ISPs making these statements are so dishonest is that they all run caching of various sorts which involves 'packet inspection' to determine where to source the requested data from. Are they therefore saying that the internet services they are currently providing are being slowed by "up to 85%? I dooooon't thhhiiiinnnnk soooo.

Similarly these same ISPs all use 'lists' to ban certain sites for various reasons (spam/phishing/abuse) and, again, are they saying that running 'ban lists' slows their services by up to 85%? Again - I dooooont thiiiinnnnkkk sooo.

Thirdly, and most cogently and despite various denials, many/most Australian ISPs operate some sort of P2P access control hardware that detects encrypted P2P traffic for the purpose of controlling the bandwidth available to P2P traffic - Exetel has been doing that for over two years as has much of the rest of the world. Are those ISPs that use P2P control hardware saying that they are slowing the overall traffic though their networks by up to 85% - same answer.....of course it doesn't.

Sooooo....where does this leave the "technical" argument against the Federal Government implementing "ban lists"? It leaves any suggestion that implementing a ban list would degrade the overall operation of the internet in any way as total nonsense put out by people who are either being deliberately dishonest or technically stupid (or by people who personally know nothing and are being 'advised' by other people who are either totally dishonest or technically stupid).

Exetel operates both ban lists and the latest versions of Allot's Net Enforcer hardware/software and does so without impacting any user of the Exetel internet service. Of course the Allot and PeerApp boxes and software cost a lot of money (in terms of our tiny ISP) but then the Federal Government is offering to fund the purchase of such boxes so there is no problem for any ISP in terms of expense if, and only if, the requirement was to deal with encrypted data and/or specific protocols.

A ban list could be implemented without any additional hardware to that already in use on any ISP's network.

So, there are no technical problems to implementing any 'ban list' the elected government of the day (and remember over 50% of voters elected this particular government of the day) and if there was no need for 'encryption busting' then the cost to any ISP would be trivial. If there is a need to use DPI then the cost would be around $1.00 per internet user in Australia which the government of the day is offering to fund.

So I enthusiastically support running trials on behalf of Stupid Stephen and Krudd and demonstrating, without a shadow of a doubt, that their loony aspirations of internet censorship can be achieved quickly and inexpensively. My only fear is that they won't proceed with this "election promise" before the next election.

Why?

Because by those morons doing such a thing we would be guaranteed that they would lose the next election in a landslide which is an essential solution to the current situation where the current lunatics will totally bankrupt Australia because of their stupidity. The new government will then immediately repeal the legislation and there will be no more talk of government imposed censorship.

Although by that time they will have bankrupted the country and f***ed the future for the following 20 years (just as Whitlam did) at least they won't get another term to ensure that Australia never recovers.

John Linton

......in these uncertain financial times:

1) The current bunch of uneducated morons posing as an Australian Federal Government has absolutely no competence, background, training, education or any other qualification to even start to understand what is going on.

2) They have even less than those abilities required to begin to understand what actions, if any, by an Australian Government should be taken.

If you have ANY doubt, whatsoever, about these statements then I suggest you read today's Australian Financial Review from first to last page and then, before going to look for the 12 gauge, just remember that 50.1% of Australians created this situation and PROMISE yourself that at future elections when you have been blessed with freedom from the crazinesses of Labor doctrinaire stupidities for a decade you will REPEAT THE MANTRA:

Whitlam, Hawke, Keating, Krudd....Every One A Total Dud

500 times before going within 100 metrers of an election booth.

Maybe the report from the "Ideas Summit" - that pinnacle of stupidity that defines Krudd's understanding of the responsibilities of a PM will solve all of his current lack of ideas? ...or is he still hoping that piece of sheerest nonsense has been forgotten by the electorate along with his other vital contributions to managing Australia like saying "sorry" and signing the "Kyoto Protocols" and then saying he isn't going to do what is required? While that moon faced, grinning fool ponced around with trivialities and jetting round the globe he should have been desparately trying to get up to speed trying to understand what Australia's economy was transforming into - but that would have required an intellect, self dicipline and humility - three attributes he clearly lacks.

Along with scrapping work choices without replacing it with anything other than vague promises as unemployment is set to rapidly increase he has, within 12 months, pretty much defined himself as the worst Australian Prime Minister Australia has ever had (and Whitlam set what I thought was an unbeatable low in that contest) and easily the most incompetent ever across so many different areas of knowledge.

Thank goodness the comms press wasn't so universally depressing today.

I was curious about the last paragraph of an IDC report:

http://www.arnnet.com.au/article/273990/idc_top_10_telco_predictions_2009?fp=4194304&fpid=1

commenting on the future of HSPA. While I very much doubt that IDC has any more insight into the future of broad band comunications in Australia than anyone else who follows the market relatively closely it would be ineresting to see the 'research' that prompted that statement to be made. I agree that wimax is never going to be of any interest in Australia - a view I formed almost two years ago in the earlier stages of looking for a wireless broad band service for Exetel.

Exetel will begin various promotions of HSPA (both as a broad band data service and as a mobile/VoIP service) in February with the objective of activating more monthly HSPA services per month than ADSL services by July/August 2009. It's far too early for us, based on sales to date, to be confident about achieving that objective but we are hopeful that it's more than possible for a tiny company to do things that the carriers just can't do on a low end service such a HSPA - and in some cases they absolutely don't want to do at all.

I have no idea how many HSPA services are being sold each month in Australia at the moment but would guess that its overtaken broadband sales in terms of new users and has started to eat in to the ADSL1 installed user base at the low end. As HSPA speeds increase in more geographic areas this trend can only continue to increase and my 'bet' would be that by mid 2009 HSPA will outsell new ADSL by something like 2:1.

If that is going to turn out to be anything like correct it will be interesting to see how the ISPs who have committed themselves to futures based on ADSL2 networks deal with such a change in technologies (should it occur as swiftly as I'm postulating). A great deal of 'discounting' and 'cannibalisation'?....almost certainly.

I have to say that after four months I am more than happy with my Exetel/Optus HSPA driven laptop and my Exetel/Optus driven N95 which I ony use to make VoIP mobile calls and send Exetel 5 cent SMS's.

So there's a third thing you can be absolutely certain about:

3) HSPA will become the dominant broad band technology much faster than is currently widely predicted.

John Linton

.....for the word was passed around...the amount of bad debt had got away....and had joined the wildest nightmares.....it was more'n ten million pound.......  (apologies to A B Paterson).

As people trickle back to 'work' from their various holidays and 'breaks' I would imagine that more than a few meetings will be held around the various capital cities as the realisation begins to dawn on various financial controllers that the amount of money collected over the past four weeks is much less than "usual for the time of year" and that much of the accounts receivable has not only increased over the past four weeks but has, almost in unison, moved a further 30 days in arrears.

I say this because I had three telephone calls yesterday from three of Exetel's larger suppliers which, stripped of the good wishes for the new year (mine seems to have started some weeks ago), all seemed to have the sole purpose of enquiring about what I knew about various companies that were also their customers. It became apparent that my contacts at these suppliers (all from the "sales side" of the business) were getting a very hard time from their finance departments about the amount and age of their unpaid accounts. It didn't take much 'probing' on my part to get the feeling that all was not well in the land of carrier to wholesale buyer land at this particular point in time.

You would have to live in some remote area of the planet that had no contact with the outside world to not know that the current "GFC" would produce slower payments up and down the supplier to end user 'chain' and that Australia would eventually feel the same effects that have been occurring in the US and the EU for many months now. Personally, I expected our defaulted payments on our January 1st bill run to be much worse than they turned out to be - I was very pleasantly surprised that they were in fact less than both December's and November's - but we had taken a number of measures over the previous few months to try and make that happen - being able to read the daily financial press. Of course, our 'business model' is, and always has been of necessity, a major contributor to our protection from bill non-payment by our customers which prevents us from getting in to the situation that, apparently, so many small companies do:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123258195829104305.html

I felt particularly sorry for Ms Ortiz (one of the reasons I told some acquaintances recently that we weren't interested in bidding for their "huge" business opportunities).

As of a few moments ago Exetel's defaulted debt on the January 1st bill run is 67 customers (out of North of 90,000) and a little over $A4,500 out of around $A4 million billed in January to date. However we would expect to collect all but  2 or 3 of those defaulting 67 customers before the end of the month. In addition to the 67 January 1st defaulters there are another 3 new customers whose activation charges have been defaulted but, generally, those are collected within 48 hours of the default.

I don't feel 'smug' about those numbers - that's the way we set the company up to operate and that's the way it's been since we did our first daily and monthly billing. We have collected virtually every cent of the well over $A100 million we have billed over the past five years and collected it on the day we issued the invoices for it. We couldn't offer the low prices that we have always done if we couldn't be certain of being paid on time.....and we couldn't, as a small start up business, be certain we could stay in business if we couldn't pay our suppliers on time. So the "no pay - no service" policy has been rigidly adhered to from 'day one' and it has ensured we survived. Doubtless it has cost us some "major business opportunities" throughout that time but then it has also been "one less thing to worry about" as Forrest (or was it Forrest's mamma?) might have observed.

Perhaps things are going to change as the recession begins to 'bite' and perhaps, depending on the severity of what is going to happen, there will be very real collection problems as 2009 progresses - I certainly wouldn't bet against it. If what I picked up from yesterday's phone calls is correct then I doubt that beginning to take 'new' collection actions now is going to improve anything - if the current customer base is already slow paying/defaulting on their debts then there is no basis for believing that worsening financial conditions will make that situation any better.

P.S:

If you heard/watched the interview with Lindsay Tanner last night you would realise just how inept the current group of uneducated know-nothings posing as the Australian Federal Government are. In response to a series of questions from a neutral/helpful ABC interviewer he could only keep mumbling that no-one in the world knew what to do but the Labor government would be taking immediate and positive action to ensure things (things FCS???) would not be any worse than they could be. If you didn't know he was a 'real' Minister Of Finance you would have thought it was a John Clarke/Brian Dawe send up he made such a total goose of himself. Irrespective of his degree of self goosification the fact remains that that bunch of losers really don't have a clue and will continue to p*** away money until Australia is bankrupted.

John Linton

I read, with great amusement, this article in the WSJ today:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123248760842899491.html

My amusement was at the concept of Telstra giving 30% to 50% discounts to residential and small business users who call up and say times are tough for them and they want cheaper phone and internet services and the sophistication of an inbound telemarketing team that would be empowered to 'negotiate' such large discounts over the telephone. Perhaps all that was being done was to offer a 'win back' deal that had all the pricing listed - more likely scenario.

Having given it a few minutes thought over a cup of coffee I realised that it wasn't so difficult and that Telstra has been doing something very similar for at least two years via its 'out bound' "special offers" where it approaches other ISP's customers with bundled telephone line rental, low call costs and internet that are around 50% cheaper than its 'list prices'. It seems that Optus have re-started (did they ever stop?) their door knock campaigns with pushy back packers making all kinds of absurd (just plain illegal if the reports are to be believed) claims to 'win back' customers of other carriers.So very similar things happen in Australia and have for a very long time.

However the point that really struck me was exemplified by this:

"The representative sat down with me and told me what the new cost could be, and my mind was made up," says Mr. Christie, who now pays Cablevision about $120 a month, down from the $226 a month he was paying Verizon for the three services."

Just how much margin is there in a communications service that allows a company (in a relatively competitive marketplace) to undercut a major competitor by over 40% AND bear the cost of employing someone to go to the prospective customer's home to discuss and sign up the deal?

Obviously a lot more than Exetel makes.

But I was encouraged that the 'classic' scenario that it's only when times get tough that people look at just how much too much they are paying for 'basic services' of which internet and telephone are as basic as they get these days. Hopefully this scenario will begin to happen in Australia later this year when more people realize just how ripped off they are paying the prices for internet and telephony that are charged by some of the more price gouging suppliers in Australia - and these gouging prices aren't only being charged by Telstra.

You also have to wonder how those US companies are going to cope with the loss of gross profit caused by doing such deals if they become widespread rather than 'anecdotal'? It seems they do what Telstra does based on this:

"On the surface of it, the country's biggest carriers continue to boost prices despite the downturn. In January, Comcast and Time Warner Cable raised year-over-year prices by 6% for TV services,"........"Behind the scenes, however, the companies are much more accommodating."

.......they simply raise their 'list' prices relying on the dumbness and inertia of the majority of their customers not to move away and try and grab their competitor's customers with their "special deals" - punishing the stupid for being "loyal" (in the terms the customer would put it) and (too dumb to understand they are being ripped off) as the supplier probably regards it.

We had our best January day yesterday with applications for most services recording their highest level for the new year to date and already today that trend looks set to continue. I do think that we are seeing some plus as being the lowest cost provider to the residential market and I also see signs of that beginning to, finally, work in our favour in the business markets in which we operate (its only taken five years!). I also continue to 'sense' that the market, overall, for communications services is 'softening' at least in one or two areas so I'm taking nothing for granted.

Overall that WSJ article cheered me in that it's nice to see some external evidence, even if it is anecdotal, that 'classic' scenarios are alive and well in a recession coming to a suburb near you - soon. Perhaps a minor upside of that terrible event is that many people will re-think what they have been paying for all sorts of services and products (including communications) and they will free up more disposable income for themselves instead of lavishing it on  overpaid communication's company personnel life styles.

John Linton

It is interesting, for me at least, to observe the huge differences between the 'mind set' that we had five years ago when we started Exetel with the objective of building the 'perfect' ISP and sketched out a three year plan to accomplish that and the 'mind set' we now have (having failed to build the 'perfect' ISP even after a two year extension on the original time frame) to take Exetel from where it is today to the company we would like it to be in three years time.

We are still aiming at building the 'perfect' ISP but we now have five years of failure to do that to better advise us on how to go about it plus we have some of the worst economic times of the "industrial age" to take in to consideration. This crossed my mind early this morning when I was writing, for what must be the "thousandth" time, 'new' sales documentation for the sales force we have begun to recruit. I checked what I had written in terms of the advantages to the end user about a very simple Exetel product with what I could find on 7 other ISPs web sites. It's not for me to determine what is effective in 'selling' a product to a web browsing prospective user but what I saw surprised and, in a way, saddened me.

I was surprised by the sheer 'appallingness' (or should that be 'appallingivity'?) of the vocabulary/grammar used in each of the 'product descriptions' I managed to find which was only matched by the unbelievable lack of truth in the few 'factual' statements I read. However, I suppose what 'saddened me' was the triviality and nonsense that presumably successful commercial companies thought was appropriate to use to present the advantages of their products to a prospective buyer. The wording of the triviality and nonsense was so similar by seven different companies a casual observer could be forgiven for thinking that it was written by the same person. Perhaps they just all copy each other's ideas and wording? There is a startling lack of originality in their 'blurbs'.

I really have absolutely no interest in what or how other companies do but I was again reminded of how very difficult it must be for the management of these companies, much larger than Exetel, to control or even be aware of what their employees say to prospective buyers of their products if the written words on their web site are so very ill considered.....which lead me to the inevitable conclusion that growing Exetel beyond its current personnel levels would inevitably lead to a similar situation - if we are not extremely careful.

At our current very small size it is possible for me to still write every word that appears on our web site and every word that appears in our sales documentation (or do a final check of what someone else has written) but it is already past the time that I can, and have, done that for our technical and some of our operational documentation. By the way, I am by no means saying that only my writing style/grammar/syntax/legal knowledge/etc is "perfect". What I am trying to say is that currently Exetel is still able to exercise extremely tight control over what written words appear describing any aspect of our business and products and services and processes.

Very shortly that will be much more difficult than it is today.

When we set out five years ago to build Exetel one of our key objectives was to base as much of our 'value proposition' on web site selling and total automation of all ordering, procurement and support processes and we have largely succeeded in that objective which, apart from delivering the highest possible level of efficiencies, also provides total 'quality control' over all written communication with customers.

Now that we will switch a lot of our selling, and more of our support, to individual human beings that total control will continue to erode very swiftly and we will become subject to the whims and waves and frailties of human demands in what may be said and written to prospective and actual customers.

So automating highly complex operational processes (which has cost us well over $A2 million and has taken five years) appears to be a piece of cake compared to putting in place the systems and processes required to deliver the equivalent perfect sales and support customer interfaces - at an affordable cost. I'm quite unclear how to go about this, currently, seemingly impossible task in any real detail but I talked with Steve yesterday about how we might make a start to what looks like a dauntingly long and highly complex set of processes.

Perhaps it too will take another five years and more millions of dollars and I'm not sure that I will be able to play the same part in this process as I did in the last five years of driving the previous developments - the probable time frame is currently beyond my personal planning horizon. I very much doubt that any Australian communications company has got as 'pure' customer interfaces as we have developed (but of course I can't be sure of that) and I would be equally sure that no other Australian communications company has the same level of detailed plans to take wherever they have reached today to a level of excellence far beyond any designated 'perfection' that can be reached today.

However, everything needs to be started before any real estimates can be made on just how long completion will really take and we have made a start by moving all of our sales and support documentation to one place and introducing a multi-peer ongoing review of each piece of 'writing' via a 'wiki" process. It's only a start and we have yet to establish just how we will ensure 'perfection' is maintained but we will do that over time if it is at all possible.

Hopefully if we don't achieve perfection in this planning period we will at least go closer than any other ISP has been able to go to date.

John Linton

(apologies to Juvenal for trivialising his acid comment).....or as practiced by Krudd it would be more like a version of the old Paul Hogan come on  - "sling another 10 bill in cash on the barbie, sorry, to the Labor voters - Whine."

So after a mercifully Krudd free period, the master of making statements of the bleeding obvious 3 months too late (correcting his previous 180 degree opposite views) has returned to a drive time radio station in your car (is 7.05 am drive time these days?).

I guess Krudd had his 4 week holiday so someone could finally convince him that "Everything is going to fine in Australia because we are protected by....." (his last public statement before taking 4 weeks off in the most dangerous period in Australia's financial history) isn't actually credible any more and I cringed as I listened to his toneless and emotionless delivery of meaningless platitudes on AM 630 as I drove to the office this morning. Why does that d***head use such a passionless monotone (a speaking clock has more variation in its sentence construction and delivery) when speaking about very serious issues?.

I can't recall his exact words but the substance of what the moron was trying to say is contained in this article:

http://www.smh.com.au/news/national/time-to-pull-together-pleads-rudd/2009/01/19/1232213540892.html

So, despite his emphatic statements to the contrary prior to his 4 weeks off, grandstanding at the cricket and generally poncing around various parts of Melbourne and its environs, on his first day "back at work" he takes the time to travel and tuck in to the fine dining and the contents of the best cellar in NSW at Kirribilli House to let the assembled friends of Labor know what he has currently learned - "that things are going to be very tough in 2009".

Brilliant.

What a truly tremendous piece of understanding and so very f***ing helpful to be told by such a total moron what everyone has known for more than 6 months.

I guess he should go back on holiday - oh wait - in 5 days time he will, yet again, be jetting off around the world on his private wide body jet, to make his insightful pronouncements to the grateful citizens of Indonesia, India and Switzerland!! I guess five days of 'work' in Australia is all he can manage in these, as he puts it so insightfully, "tough times". Poor darling needs a break in between making his breathlessly awaited pronouncements.

I guess it was appropriate that directly across the water from the Kirribilli House dining room, 300 bankruptcy accountants and lawyers were swilling champagne celebrating the record growth they were experiencing:

http://business.smh.com.au/business/let-the-bad-times-roll-the-recession-they-cant-wait-to-have-20090119-7kth.html

With the current lack of political and financial leadership firmly installed in Canberra (or Davoz or wherever) for the next two years it is obvious that everyone outside the Australian Labor Party/Trade Unions/Hand out recipients will have to work even harder than they currently are to attempt to produce enough tax money for Krudd and Whine to continue p***ing it away in ever more bizarre hand outs.

I made a contribution earlier this morning. I started to put in place some of the planned changes to Exetel's ADSL services by increasing the midnight to noon download allowance on all ADSL1 and ADSL2 plans from 48 gb to 54 gb - for those who struggle with math before their morning caffeine neurone enlivener - that's adding around 10% more download allowance per month for the average Exetel user of ADSL at no increase in monthly payments. Given the gravity of the situation that Krudd has now made me aware of I even back dated the implementation to 1st January 2009.

As things are now going to get 'much tougher' I expect to see all other right thinking companies, with the exception of Telstra, improve the value of their various offerings in the near term future . We had planned for a number of scenarios but it's actually far less clear to me than it is to Krudd (despite having the benefit of an additional six months realisation that things would be very tough in 2009) as to what needs to be done about whatever it is that will transpire. I guess we won't be "sitting down with the unions" to negotiate less layoffs and pay cuts as we are planning to double our Australian employee numbers and we gave significant remuneration increases to almost 15% of our current employees this month.

So, despite Krudd's pronouncements, Exetel is not going to take any part of his cautionary advice and is already doing the exact opposite as, unlike that d***head, we really did always understand that the Australian economy was in for a really tough time in 2009 and his 'macro' assumptions about what to do in such circumstances are so stupid it makes you want to cry. He really is a very, very ignorant and stupid example of a Labor politician at the very worst such a stereotype conjures up to the semi-sentient mind. Krudd gives new meaning to the term "light weight" - I think you'd need an atomic scale to detect any brain mass at all.

...and it isn't only me who thinks Krudd's stupid statements about 'wage pauses' are the sheerest nonsense:

http://www.smh.com.au/news/opinion/rudd-the-worst-thing-to-happen-to-working-families/2009/01/20/1232213642972.html

For the first time I think I can detect a slowing of the various 'business tides' that we monitor ever more closely as we try to detect if and when our particular businesses will become affected by the financial problems that are so widely publicised. I notice my almost next door neighbour, Mrs Ridout, suggested that Australia is still months away from feeling the impact of the problems in the US and the EU:

http://business.smh.com.au/business/businesses-brace-for-harder-times-20090120-7l0i.html

and she would have far better detailed insight than most. It is easy to make an error as the indications are so very slight, at least at the moment, that it's very hard to rely on what are often no more than very marginal changes. Ignoring Krudd's idiocies and moronic exhortations - it may be that the Australian communications business may have begun to be affected before Heather's predicted time frame.

....and I've still got 12 hours work left in the day........

John Linton

.....to a 'Sales Company'.

We have begun the extremely difficult process of changing Exetel from a company where each additional employee was hired to perform a job directly related to the support of an established customer in some way to a company that, in Australia at least, will only now hire new personnel to contact potential customers and assist them make a decision to become an Exetel customer.

The current plan is to double the number of personnel within Exetel from 40 to 90 over the coming 12 months with 40 of the 'end total' being direct sales personnel.

We have had, since we commenced business only one person who was designated as a 'sales' person and he was fully occupied in replying to inbound inquiries from business and government people who wanted information having become interested in Exetel via the web site or their own personal experiences as a residential customer.

We have had, for much of our existence, a "sales" option in our IVR and a 'contact sales' email address on our web site but the personnel who answered either the sales calls or the sales email inquiries were the same engineers who answered the support inquiries and were given no "sales training" at all on the basis that residential enquirers basically wanted technical information.

Our web site "marketing" (the overall layout and every single word written) has been done by one person since it was 'created' over five years ago. Whatever any 'critic' may think of our web sites over the years they have been the sole source in creating a $A40+ million business in less than 5 years which was pretty much the target we aimed at.

But now we have to change to build much of Exetel's future growth from the business user market, serious VoIP user and HSPA in both business and residential market sectors.

While a few of our engineering qualified personnel will move to more sales oriented roles, the majority of the, possibly, 40 people we will add to Exetel over the coming 12 months will be new hires who will almost all be recent graduates attempting to build their future careers via their first jobs. A brave, many people might think very foolish, endeavour. Perhaps that is what it is - time will tell. I have been around and intimately involved in selling and building sales forces from 'scratch' many times over the past 40 years and therefore have some quite significant experience in undertaking such a task. However that was then and this is now and now, among many differences, I already have a very large number of other things for which I'm responsible that seem to more than adequately fill my day. So it will be, to say the least, a "challenge".

I spent some time yesterday 'sketching out' how to teach 40 'graduates' how to not only 'sell' but do a better job at 'selling' than anyone they would compete with in today's communications marketplaces. As I have been 'selling' Exetel's products and services via the web site for the last five years my detailed product knowledge of both our own products and those of our competitors is very 'current' so that presents no problem. The techniques to be used do present a problem as I have no recent direct experience of dealing 'face to face' with our business customers. 

So my intended course of action is to 'teach' selling a step at a time and I thought I'd start with the five things that I have found to be the most important aspects/elements of my personal (financially) very successful career in selling technology products and services in Australia over the past 40 plus years which are:

1)      People Usually Prefer To Buy Rather Than Be Sold

This is generally true in the world of business technology decisions and it is very important, especially for sales people at the start of a sales career to keep this in mind.

Rule Number 1: Become as expert as you can as quickly as you can in terms of answering questions about your product lucidly and succinctly.

2)      It’s Difficult Enough To Understand Everything About Exetel’s Products And Services

Never make any comment about any other supplier’s products or services – you have no way of knowing what changes another company has made to them.

Rule Number 2 = No buyer likes someone criticizing another company’s product or service so never do it

3)      Everything Is Urgent In Terms Of Supplying Information

The ONLY time that it’s appropriate to send a prospective customer information about something he/she has requested is the second after you have put down the phone or read the email.

Rule Number 3 = Always do it NOW without fail EVERY TIME.

4)      Unlike The Old (And Discredited) Proverb – All Things Don’t Come To He Who Waits

If you aren’t doing something to generate new sales every minute of every working day who do you think is doing that for you?

Rule Number 4 = Develop a routine that pushes you to use all of your time to generate business.

5)      There is No Such Thing As A Perfect Sales Document

When you join a company/sales team you will 'inherit a lot of "boiler plate" documentation that may well have been written by very senior and very competent people within the company.

Rule Number 5 = Every time you send out a proposal/sales letter improve one thing about it – no matter how small.

If Exetel could have a 40 person sales force that worked every day on this basis then I think we will do very well. There are some other things a successful sales person needs to become capable of doing but not many.

Working out how to get this implemented is something I have given no thought to.

John Linton

It was with great sadness that I read that Circuit City was in the final throes of going out of business:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123212123583390511.html

I have spent many, many months in the USA on work assignments, 'trade show' visits and supplier briefings and negotiations and a visit to the closest Circuit City store to pick up some key cable/component that I had unwittingly left behind or had got damaged during the trip just prior to a key 'presentation' was a 'life saver' on many of those trips. In later days Circuit City would be my last stop before heading for the airport to pick up the latest games and gadgets for my children and I was always astonished at the apparent acres and acres of display shelves selling every thing electronic and software you could conceive.

Over almost 30 years I watched as Circuit City made continual changes from ham radio and kit TVs through the very early days of DEC and its competitor's 8 bit computer kits thrugh the early days of the IBM PC 'revolution' (the first chain to recognise the importance of both Taiwanese prices and their advanced technology in the early 1970s) and then into the computers and accessories used today - all it appeared to me - seamlessly and with the assured touch of a competent management whose past experiences and assessments of the future let them abandon 'old' product lines while introducing new technologies without missing a 'beat'.

But now - gone by the end of April - the once unchallenged chain store that dominated technology supplies in ways that the likes of the old Radio Shack couldn't begin to aspire to - but Radio Shack will continue on while Circuit City wil soon be just a fading memory. Like GM and Chrysler - once unthinkable that they wouldn't continue to dominate the US markets forever - now the world has changed so dramatically there is no place for them.

From what I've read the sort of sweeping changes that have been occurring in the US and the EU throughout 2008 will begin to make their presence felt in Australia in 2009. While you can also read the assurances of various 'experts' that Australia will not face the same magnitude of financial and commercial 'disasters' that are every day reading in the New York Wall Street Journal and London's Financial Times you have to wonder just why Australia and Australians will be so 'protected'. (and yes -I've read huge amounts of the Australian 'poular press's rationales - but they are all, at least to me, written by people who simply don't know (the financial journaliists and their tame sources) or by people who wouldn't know but want you to believe that everything is fine (the lying politicians from Krudd downwards - or should that be upwards?).

I can see one piece of indisputable 'evidence' of changing for the worse times and I see it every day of the week. That is the number of shops/business premises that have closed down over the last few months on the 5 - 8 minute drive from my home to Exetel's North Sydney office along Military Road - a very busy Sydney Road. The count has gone from 7 in mid September to 38 last Friday. Time of the year you say? Possibly. I'll take a bet though that the count will be higher by the end of March 2009.

Just like the employees of Circuit City the "Australia is protected" pontifications won't be of any comfort to the employees and owners of those 31 businesses in one tiny part of Sydney's business populations. - they no longer have a job in the case of the employees and they have a lot less money/a lot more debt in the case of the business proprietors - they too of course also have no income.

From my contacts with several of Exetel's suppliers I also get very clear indications that business is not good for them with the 'missed targets' of a few months ago becoming the "year to forget" of today. In some ways that's good for Exetel as our small business volumes become a little more important to some of our suppliers who are not having the best of times. However it also means that some of our competitors have already found it tougher that we have and I'm under no illusions that Exetel will find 2009 much tougher than 2008.

Nil desperandum - tough times are made for tough people and I think we are among the very toughest.

Sad about Circuit City though.

John Linton

......and continues to look ever more irrelevant.

The recent 'decision' by one part of the Federal Government reported here:

http://www.australianit.news.com.au/story/0,25197,24920990-15306,00.html

makes even more nonsense of another part of the Federal Government currently considering the nonsensical joke called the NBN "tender" - for all the reasons I, and anyone else with half a brain cell, have been saying since the "NBN" became Labor election winning sound bite major policy in October 2007 - that the only cost-effective, and rapid, way of addressing rural and regional broad band issues was not to spend years laying cable but to accelerate the implementation of HSPA services already being rolled out by the four current mobile carriers (and by making the spectrum cost disappear via long term no charge licenses in rural areas thus possibly making it cheaper for a rural user to get LTE than the users in the main cities - now there's a turnaround with a lot of political mileage!).

So, actually Labor have now honoured their election commitment of providing 'equality of broadband' to 98% of Australians' and they have done it in record time. (who could ever have expressed doubt that the current Labor cabinet and the Prime Minister represented the worst dross ever to have held those positions since Federation?). Not only have they honoured their promise and done it in record time they not only haven't had to spend any more tax payer dollars they have actually reduced the expenditure they were already making on communications in rural and regional Australia!!

Just how brilliant are these political and infrastructure creating genii???

All they have to do now is to reduce the current spectrum licence charges for mobile GSM in rural and regional areas (based on number of base stations deployed in those areas) and run an effective tender for LTE mobile spectrum and the process of providing high speed broadband to 99.99% of all Australians will be complete in record time and without the expenditure of a single tax payer's dollar.

You just have to stand back in stunned amazement at the sheer intellectual genius and demonstrable in depth knowledge of the technical and logistical issues they have grasped so quickly and realise that we finally have a Federal government we deserve (or those of you who voted for it deserve - I personally cannot share any of your credit).

One thing that may be puzzling to the casual reader of the referenced article is why the credit for this break through in government thinking is being given to Optus and not to Telstra who have loudly self proclaimed, ad nauseam, in every available media outlet that ONLY TELSTRA has wide HSPA rural coverage and great rural HSPA speeds.

Simple answer.

They were the first and they may well still be the best - but (and it's the usual 'but' associated with everything Telstra does) the cost just isn't affordable because Telstra, as usual, bases its user gouging end user pricing on "you'll pay whatever price we choose to charge because you have no option".

I guess we can all count ourselves very lucky that, at least at this point in time, Telstra isn't being granted a continuation of their Australian communications monopoly (via the NBN) to ensure that fast broadband is always out of reach of a lot of Australian users.

Having four carriers offering HSPA/LTE services in rural Australia makes competitive common sense for both now and the future as well as economic comon sense in obviating the need to lay cables in areas of sparse usage.

Vive la difference!! (between wireless and cable - not the original meaning)