John Linton
Maybe I am trying to digest too much information or maybe I just can't follow the methods of information disclosure that are now used in the main stream and communications media. I have no idea what to make of this when I read it earlier this morning:
http://www.zdnet.com.au/news/communications/soa/Telstra-bought-iBurst-s-wireless-spectrum/0,130061791,339294117,00.htm
Perhaps, more than a possibility, I don't understand how different spectra can be used for different applications and Telstra sees this band as being more useful than their current HSPA roll out capabilities - but, while I know there is no limit to my technical ignorance, I just can't come to grips with how that could be the case and what justification there would be to fund a second wireless network of any real size.
So why is Telstra spending some amount of 'real' money to buy a spectrum that it has previously shown no interest in and which has attracted very few users (admittedly being promoted and serviced by tiny companies with strictly limited promotion budgets)? What is it that this spectrum can do that Telstra's current HSPA can't already provide? I haven't got a clue. I have trouble with the "bought on a dog in the manger" basis as that makes less than no sense in any way I look at it.
While we were attempting to find an HSPA solution over the past almost three years we looked at several wireless solutions using different spectra and came quite close on two occasions to actually investing some money in trialling them. While the money (around $150,000) for the trial wasn't particularly onerous in terms of capex at the times we got close to these decisions it was enough to tilt the balance to the negative when we considered what a second and subsequent 'step' might be.
The problem for Exetel (as I'm sure the problem was for this spectrum's previous owners) would have been the complexity and cost of setting up a realistic network that would generate enough payback to be able to fund the financing costs. While Telstra wouldn't have any such problem it's very difficult to see on what basis they could use it for an end user service. I also can't see how it can be used as a microwave link replacement but that may just be my total technical ignorance.
So one more 'dark cloud the size of a man's fist' on the far horizon of Exetel's HSPA plans? I have no idea.
We will begin our 'three pronged attack' on the HSPA markets we will target over the next three months today offering portable data services via laptops/notebooks to 15,000 medium/large and large commercial organisations. I understand that Telstra, Optus, Optus/Virgin, Vodafone and 3 have already 'done this market to death' but we only need 10,000 units sold in this marketplace over the next nine months and believe we have enough 'exclusives' to make our offer much better than what I have seen of those made by the carriers themselves and their resellers.
I think the fixed IP, a minimum monthly spend of $5.00 per service and the low per mb usage cost plus the ability to send and receive 5 cent SMS and to send and receive 3 cent faxes is a far more complete business offering than the carriers with their multi-gigabytes for $40.00 - a portable data service used in business doesn't get anywhere near 2 gigabytes at the outside - based on my own and people I know in business who use portable data services. The use of VoIP is an added bonus depending on the various issues I maundered on about a couple of days ago.
We will know pretty soon whether we have been able to construct an attractive enough 'package' for a business user and, if not, then we'll move to our second strategy. We actually don't have an alternate sales 'strategy' as we have building the current one for over two years now in the hope that we would eventually find a suitable HSPA Layer 2 service that would make all our development work worthwhile.
Over the weekend we will start the program of approaching our 256/64 users to point out some advantages of them considering using HSPA with the aim of interesting as many as possible in moving using some sort of free HSPA modem and activation offer. This will be much more difficult, operationally, logistically and in overcoming the 'differentness' of the concept of HSPA versus wire line. However it is a really key part of our 'move forward' plans for 2009 so we willhave to find the ways to make it happen.
By the end of next week we will address a different 10,000 small/medium commercial entities with a VoIP over HSPA telephone service that should have a lot of appeal. We haven't been able to solve our fring issues of getting them to set up servers here and we have yet to get Nimbuzz fully functional but everything else seems ready to go.I think we will have to accept rality and write our own version of the fring/nimbuzz switching which will take a bit of time but shouldn't be that hard.
So I don't know what to make of Telstra's buying up more spectrum but I'm sure someone much brighter than me will provide the reasoning in the not too distant future - in the mean time we have a lot of tough targets to meet and can't afford more speculation time.