John Linton I was thinking about the total weirdness of a company like Internode agreeing to resell ADSL2 services from Telstra Wholesale and the fact that some other ISPs have done the same. I have made my thoughts clear for some time (more than a year) about the actions taken by Telstra in their various 'marketing programs' and their sudden "Road to Damascus" conversion from "fighting the ACCC to the death to prevent being forced' to wholesale their ADSL2 services" to "Hey, pssst - wanna buy some cut price ADSL2?" approaches to what I presume was to every ISP in Australia in mid 2008. (my use of the words "cut price" were in keeping with the phrasing of the illustration of course as the pricing subsequently set by the various ISPs who are offering TW ADSL2 are anything but).
The only conclusion I can come to is that Internode and other ISPs who have taken up this strange 'path' must have a more compelling reason than a cheap and nasty grab for money by selling massively over priced services to people who have limited/no options and have also decided that their revenue statistics need 'propping up' by adding re-sold telephone line rental and Testraesque sky high call charges as their current revenue growth tapers off (falls?). Doubtless I have completely misunderstood the situations but I can't come up with any other rationale.
What is the 'compelling reason' likely to be? I obviously have no idea not having talked with Telstra myself (something I can't bring myself to do if I can possibly avoid it as my experiences in the past have always ended up with me leaving any meeting with Telstra feeing like I either need to visit a psychiatrist to check whether my understanding of reality is really as out of kilter as Telstra personnel insist it is or needing to find the nearest bar to drink more than several large single malts to get the taste of the sh** I've been forced to swallow out of my mouth).
The only 'compelling reason' I can think of that makes any sort of sense out of the weird decisions recently by Internode and iinet and, to a lesser extent the other companies that have 'decided' to 'sell' TW ADSL2 is that they have 'formed the view' that Telstra's ADSL1 services in exchanges where Telstra has deployed ADSL2 will be 'withdrawn or 're-priced' in some not too distant future. Of course, as always, I could be totally wrong - I just can't think of any other reason why these 'independent' ISPs would make such a stupid decision.
Telstra's ADSL1 pricing is far higher than any other wholesaler's ADSL2 pricng and presumably, far higher than any 'independent' ISP's own ADSL2 deployment pricing so moving from TW ADSL1 to ADSL2 should always allow a faster service to be provided at a lower cost that the slowest Telstra ADSL1 service (256/64). So moving from Telstra ADSL1 to ANY other wire line based broadband service is a 'financial no brainer'' - which is, of course, why so many ISPs built out their own capital city DSLAM networks.
Then the 'NBN' "tender" came along and, at least it appears, that many of these 'independent' DLSAM builders have had a change of 'heart'/made a 180 degree turn and decided that "no more DLSAMs for me - Im going to join the Evil Empire and screw the Federation of Independent Planets - oops - Terria".......or something like that?
One of the major projects that Exetel has to carry out over the first half of 2009, and we started this process in July 2008, is to convince as many of our current high speed/higher usage ADSL1 users as possible (that have the option) that they really should move to ADSL2 whether or not it means moving their telephone line service provider away from their current choice and use the Optus service which is much lower cost.
Simultaneously we have the even more difficult project of moving our lower speed/lower usage ADSL1 customers to an HSPA service. Again this is economically to their advantage but it's "new" and therefore carries all of the "unknown terrors" with it - not the least of which is the plethora of bad press dished out to Optus in the middle of last year by the media brotherhood of Optus haters.
One way or another we are going to have to cajole, convince, logically argue or 'sweet talk' in some other ways almost 40,000 current ADSL1 users to move to Optus or AAPT ADSL2 or to Optus or Vodafone HSPA in a limited amount of time. My 'gut feel' is that we have to make that happen more quickly rather than less quickly - but then I have often been wrong in the past.
The alternative is.......well.....I can't think of an alternative at the moment as I would find it hard to imagine under what circumstances I would either sell my soul (assuming it had any resale value given its long and badly abused life to date) or submit myself to an ethicotomy.