John Linton's Personal Musings

John Linton

As the dead line for the half year filings with the ASX drew to a close yesterday all but TPG and Eftel had filed their half year financial reports (though Eftel's did 'appear' after 6 pm Eastern Summer Time). There was nothing to make any positive impact, despite the spin, and if considered as a whole it shows the telecommunications market in various sorts of trouble.

Telstra, with its overwhelming market dominance, obviously provides the best guide to what's happening in Australian telecommunications and, irrespective of what Telstra flaks may try and say, shows a company under competitive pressure - not from its competitors, but from its own inherent problems of holding back new technology for so long (and don't bring up its lead in HSPA as an example of how it introduces new technology quicker than any other company - it was one investment out of more than a dozen monumental failures; and that lead in HSPA will disappear within two years).

What is now blindingly obvious (even to Telstra?) is that VoIP continues, now at a noticeable pace, to erode the use of wire line calls and also wire line revenue. Telstra, in their public statements, make the ridiculous assertion that "'people' are making less calls because of the grim financial conditions" - what a crock. The reality is that people' (and increasingly corporate Australia) is making less wire line telephone calls with Telstra because who in their right mind would use Telstra PSTN/ISDN when you can use VoIP with every other carrier and provider?

So Telstra's profits are slightly down and they have downgraded their forecast for the 1/1/09 - 30/6/09 period quite substantially. Their predicted growth in revenue is now well below double digits and may be as low as 5% for the full year. As Telstra has such a large share of the Australian market this in turn means that overall growth in Australian telecommunications will be well under double digits.

Optus also reported a significant slowing with profits down and revenue growth slowed well below double digits. AAPT's figures were not available in any detail but its parent company, Telecom NZ, reported a horrible six months. These three companies account for something like 85% of telecommunications revenue in Australia so whatever else is reported will make no difference to the key metrics of the 'industry'.

Of the smaller companies iinet, as usual, trumpeted its fantastic growth using its usual smoke and mirrors obfuscation - it is so blatant it could be regarded as just plain dishonest. How stupid do iinet think their shareholders are to compare figures from 2007's December half year, prior to the WestNet takeover, to December 2008's half year which includes WestNet's revenue and profit figures? Obviously they think they are morons. Ignoring the stupidity of adding another company's revenue to your own and saying "Wow, look at how much we've grown!" the underlying financials tell a very different story and iinet's balance sheet is probably the third worst of the telecommunications public companies if you can do simple additions and subtractions. You can find the information for yourself here:

http://www.asx.com.au/asxpdf/20090225/pdf/31g7p9t396gv54.pdf

See whether you would invest in a company with a balance sheet showing a large deficit of current assets to current liabilities.

Macquarie Telecom finally announced a profit after so many years of losing money on its $A250 million turnover but it too underlined how quickly wire line calls and line rental were eroding by stressing its revenue and profit were coming from hosting and data services which while lower revenue were profitable.

People Telecom continued to 'slim down' its personnel and reported a small operating profit on a reduced revenue but still made a loss as it was forced to write off $A5 million in "good will" and there's little doubt that the remaining $A10 million of "good will" is as worthless as the value it has been forced to write down in this period. Not that it matters as PeopleTelecom will soon be "tipped in to the bucket" of failed communications companies that is M2 which has a balance sheet that is easily the second worst of all public telecommunications companies. It would appear that M2 rely on Optus' generous trading terms to continue to operate looking at their reported figures.

The prize for the company with the most imaginative balance sheet, for the fifth successive year, and also the largest loss although the tiniest public communications company, by far, goes of course to Eftel who on a tiny six month revenue of around $A18 million managed to lose $A1.7 million - trading at a loss for the period of almost 10%. The Eftel balance sheet figures appears to make a mockery of the directors claims of solvency, but please make your own judgments:

http://www.asx.com.au/asxpdf/20090227/pdf/31gc1v3g807gdc.pdf

In the announcement that separately accompanied the figures they have tried to 'sweep under the carpet' their perilous financial situation with a bland statement to the effect that:

"they are hoping that Huawei will agree to provide further free financing over the $A3 million Huawei provided the ADSL2 network for as they can't pay for it as previously agreed".

Further they are having to pay far more for it than they had hoped because they were too stupid to buy forward cover for the contract payment dates on the A$ which has fallen around 30% since the 'deal' was signed. Talk about babes in the wood. Not only has the company not grown in revenue (after adjusting for inflation) after its "take overs" of other even tinier failed ISP and related companies but its deficiency of current assets over current liabilities has grown more over the reporting period (even assuming that the ADSL2 network debt is allowed to be deferred) and it has also had the chutzpah to INCREASE its goodwill! They proudly state that they have been "cash flow positive" for five years yet they have accumulated losses of over $A20 million in the same time - work that out if you can. Funny water they must have in Perth - and very forgiving creditors.

So taken as a whole (and wondering why TPG missed the ASX reporting deadline for the second time in a row as it should have been the one bright star in the ever darkening telecommunications sky foreshadowing as it has as late as November 2008 that it wold make over $A90 million in profit this year) the Australian telco industry is going through a bad time with the next six months being predicted as even gloomier.

On the bright side Exetel has had an excellent February with sales in 9 of our 10 services all being higher than January, itself a good month, and 4 of the 10 posting new records.

Perhaps we were right not to borrow money to invest in ADSL2 DSLAMs?

John Linton

......Taken , quite possibly mistaken, from Trujillo's statement that he was returning to the USA after, apparently, just remembering he had family there that he hadn't been able to find time to see during his last four years of jetting around the world.

....also with sincere apologies to the ghosts of Julius Caesar and those great people who struggled so hard for so many years to ensure I could read Livy, Catullus, Virgil and so many others in the original language and so improve my understanding of written English syntax (not that it is apparent these days and quite possibly never was).

So the Sol is setting on Australia and apart from his $A15 million for his last year's 'work' he will depart with a further "leaving bonus" of, according to last night's news, up to a further $AXX million. Perhaps it's worth that further gargantuan and inappropriate bonus just to get rid of the person who has done more to ensure that Australians continue to have the worst communications systems in the developed world at the highest, by far, prices.

So Trujillo found another bunny (can McGaughie be described as a "bunny" with that permanent scowl of irritation on his face?) to pay him inordinate sums of money to play around with a telecommunications company which he had to leave before his contract was up with the company that employed him in tatters. Nothing new to see here - move on - that is his performance three successive times before Telstra so what would anyone expect?

What Trujillo and co's exhorbitantly paid holiday in Australia has actually meant will be endlessly dissected over the next four months by much cleverer and astute people than me but my, quite possibly jaundiced, take on it is that, apart from a couple of dozen vastly overpaid Telstra 'senior' managers, the fact appears to be that every other Australian will be glad he is finally going:

1) Telstra retail and corporate customers who have only seen their bills go up.

2) Telstra employees (other than the dirty two dozen) who've seen their jobs eliminated, 'reclassified' and their salaries not keep up with the CPI.

3) Telstra shareholders who have seen no 'recovery' in the share price and have seen Telstra continue to borrow money to pay their bribes, I mean dividends.

4) Two Federal Governments.

5) Wholesale customers who were described as parasites and then treated accordingly.

So, pretty much, every Australian - a consistency seldom achieved in this mostly easy acceptance country. There is something about so many "American business executives" that is completely alien to Australians and that has been my observation for getting on for 40 years although the Australian "culture' has changed quite considerably over that time and I wouldn't know what it is any more. Perhaps Australia's last 20 or so years of migrants from countries devastated by America's military adventurism on behalf of its oil and armaments industries has actually deepened the older and simpler based casual contempt that very different generation of Australians had for most things from the USA.

Exetel will also be glad to see the end of those US carpetbaggers as their actions made a total mess of our tiny business and forced us to move from being happy to be a value added reseller of Telstra services to something completely different by having our supplier change from being happy to have value add resellers to one that did their very best to drive us out of business. 

Strange four years in that respect. It will be interesting to see whether the Telstra board gets rid of the equally divisive, and equally totally inept, McGauchie who has to share the blame for the mess that he brought about by hiring Trujillo and co to create, or at least to remove his snarlingly, sneering, petulant visage from Australian television as their contribution to the reduction of visual pollution in Australia.

So, onwards and, as far as can be done in difficult times, upwards. There will be no change in Telstra for some 12 to 18 months if there is any change at all so Trujillo's long overdue departure will make little/no difference to the current telecommunications scenario in this country.

Carpe Diem.

John Linton

.....and uniquely so and only in Australia.

I have been struggling to find some way of making ADSL1 services more appealing to customers as the inexorable increase in the percentage of ADSL2 to ADSL1 applications continues to reduce the number of new/churn ADSL1 applications we receive each day and the HSPA applications are moving in a similar direction. We have tried many different things to 'promote' new and churn ADSL1 business but have, largely, been unsuccessful in doing that. We have a cross over situation where we would very much like to grow our ADSL1 user base in those exchanges that are not already equipped with ADSL2 capabilities to ensure that our smaller PoPs have enough usage to allow us to increase the capabilities faster than we can by just adding ADSL2 users.

When we first made ADSL2 available (July 2006) there was not much movement in the relative percentages of the two services ordered each day - around 10% in the first 2 months moving to 15% by December that year. Over 2007 the percentage increased to around 25% and then through 2008 it progressively climbed to around 40%+. Two months into 2009 the percentage of ADSL1 applications has dropped to less than 40% of all broadband applications and will obviously continue to fall. While the 'net' application intake is not falling - it is continuing to slowly grow (excluding the HSPA contributions) - the falling 'contribution' from ADSL1 is something we would like to see slowed.

Part of that decline is, of course, because of Telstra's ADSL2 offerings on so many more exchanges and also their aggressive, a person less kind than me might say predatory, "special offer" campaigns on all their older ADSL2 exchanges. With El Sol's resignation yesterday there is, I suppose, some hope that his replacement will not regard wholesale customers in the same way (parasites) but any change in that attitude, assuming it happened, will not see any change for at lest twelve months in which time Telstra will continue to 'plunder' other ISP's ADSL1 user bases. Part would be the wider general acceptance of ADSL2 and the obvious
advantage of 'independent' ADSL2 pricing over Telstra's ADSL1 pricing.

And that's the major problem.

Even a tiny company like Exetel can buy wholesale an ADSL2 service at 50% of the cost of a Telstra 1500/256 service and at less than 30% of a Telstra 8192/384 ADSL1 service. Obviously companies larger than Exetel, or with their own ADSL2 networks, can 'buy' ADSL2 services at much lower costs than Exetel. This makes a mockery of setting sensible pricing for ADSL1 and ADSL2 services for Exetel because the slower service costs more for us to buy than the faster service. Something that I think must be unique in the history of commerce.

This is further complicated by HSPA which, as it becomes generally faster and generally cheaper, provides another faster service at lower cost than ADSL1. Because of current costs it isn't a sensible replacement for all ADSL1 users but it is both faster and lower cost for current 256/64 and 512/128 ADSL1 users and over the coming 12 months will present a very real alternative.

I have been looking at how to make more sense of the Exetel ADSL1 plans/prices for some time and especially over the past two days since I returned to Australia. No matter what I try and manipulate the basic stumbling block remains that the Telstra Wholesale prices for the base monthly connection are so much higher than an ADSL2 service there is no solution that I can see. Exetel definitely is not going to abandon its current ADSL1 users by making no further efforts to improve the ADSL1 service offerings and plans but the Telstra Wholesale pricing is impossible to get past.

With the use of hind sight it is obvious that Exetel should never have offered an ADSL1 service in the first place - but that isn't very helpful to anybody now - at the time it seemed to be the right thing to do. Until HSPA becomes a viable ADSL1 replacement we need to make our ADSL1 plans more attractive than they currently are. For most/almost all customers this means lower prices. It has defied any mental efforts that i have put in to thinking through this issue and I still can't see how ADSL1 can be made more attractive than it is. As far as I can see Exetel offers the lowest ADSL1 prices from any realistic provider and also offers more 'add ons' than any other supplier.

So if anyone has any 'break through' ideas on how to make ADSL1 more attractive I would welcome the input - I've reached the mental equivalent of a 5 meter thick brick wall that is a 1,000 meters high.

John Linton

.....whenever a commercial enterprise doesn't agree with an elected government's mandate?

Along with the breakdown and possible destruction of the world's financial system are we also in the throes of the break down of the taken for granted democratic forms of governments - at least in Australia?

I couldn't help thinking when I read this:

http://www.news.com.au/technology/story/0,28348,25100456-5014239,00.html

that apart from the infantile yelling and screaming being reported that everyone attending had completely missed the point of what living in a democracy means and, just as importantly, what obligations it brings to each person who lives in a democracy.

Now, anyone who reads my random thoughts will know that I regard the bunch of muppets currently posing as a Federal Government in Canberra as being the most uneducated and ill equipped group of ineffective individuals ever to be wished on the Australian people since Federation - but that is beside the point to this deeply concerning attack on Australia's democratic principles by Mark Newton (cat's paw for Simon Hacket), Michael Malone and some other self serving 'spokespeople' for the "ISP Industry" (and include me out from that bunch of self important wankers).

Now, if I remember correctly from my 3rd Class 'introduction to basic principles of government from Athens to National Socialist Germany', the overwhelming principle of democracy (which I'm still under the impression is the basis of the Federation in which we live) is that it comprises of two key parts:

1) Universal suffrage

2) Regular elections of governments to carry out the 'will of the people'

In Australia we have universal suffrage to a ridiculous degree - giving the vote to each Australian when they reach the age of 18. Anyone who has been 18 would know that an 18 year old is the last person any sensible human being would confer life and death (for others) decision making on. (and while that may explain why there are muppets in Canberra it isn't the point of this piece of observation).

In Australia we also have regular elections and those elections are based on voting in to control of all aspects of our country's operations some group of people (usually known as a "political party" because they have chosen to use politics to have a party each time they get elected) whom we elect based on our preference for what they say they will do if we elect them versus not liking what the other 'political parties' say they will do if elected (or actually have done while in government).

For Newton, Hackett, Malone et alia this is called democracy - stupid. It means, for the slower thinkers in the class, that if the majority of Australia's Federal electoral districts chooses one 'party' over all others then that 'party' get's three years to stick their snouts in the trough and they must do what they promised to do to 'buy' the votes of the people who elected them while the minority of people who didn't vote for them have to accept that the majority of Australians who did vote for them have also voted for 'them' to put into place their election 'promises' - which, coming back to the article cited, means they get to put in place their version of internet filtering - or at least trialling it.

No point in jumping up and down saying they're stupid (it was always obvious they were and remain stupid) - the time to have done that was not to elect them (and don't say the coalition had the same policy - it didn't - it had a web site where if a parent wanted a 'free filter' they could get one).

What's the point of electing a government if any self interest group can then say they don't agree with the democratic process so "change it to suit me personally"? Of course, self interest groups (From the coal mining industry association, the ACTU right down to any group that makes political donations or can influence votes) have money and spend it to get their 'special interests' "taken care of" by the incoming government but that's done BEFORE the election and subsequently after it but it's done quietly and with clear understanding on both sides as to what is being promised and how much it costs. All of these 'purchased' favours are either specifically included in the election promises or they are specifically excluded on the basis that they will be 'snuck through' the processes without anyone noticing.

So wasting time 'grandstanding' 15 months after the majority of Australians voted for web 'filtering' is laughable. Who do these 'opponents' think they are that their votes are worth more than everyone else? Or do they see themselves as a latter day Ulrike Meinhof as their public statements have an uncanny resemblance to her:

"Protest is when I say this does not please me. Resistance is when I ensure what does not please me occurs no more"

So, for the record:

It pleases the majority of Federal Electoral Districts that a bunch of muppets gets to carry out their election promises and unless iinet/internode etc intend to use RAF tactics of bombing and assassination instead of just petulantly stamping their feet then democracy is what they have to deal with.

Don't like it - don't vote for it.

Also for the record I think internet filtering as proposed by Krudd and Stupid Stephen is totally pointless, won't work and may have some negative effects if it's ever actually put in place - but I didn't vote for the muppets going through the motions of doing it.

So, basically, this means - if you voted Labor in the last election you should realise that you SPECIFICALLY agreed to have internet filtering so what are you now whining about?

PS: for those people who believe themselves technically competent enough to see how stupid Krudd's policies on this and the NBN are - how stupid do you think ALL his other policies are on things you don't consider yourself knowledgeable about?

Frightening isn't it?

John Linton

Following the presentation I did yesterday morning, I have received four pleasant emails thanking me for the presentation and asking if Exetel was offering consulting services on web process automation and integrating VoIP into those processes the way I demonstrated Exetel was doing. Two of the enquirers also said they had gone to the Exetel web site and found my blog and wanted to know why I took so much trouble and put so much time into writing every day and would I recommend them doing that.

I replied to each email differently, the questions were slightly different, and my 'advice' on anyone writing a blog about their business was that it would be very beneficial to their business but it did require some self discipline and it was often inconvenient which meant that it required an ability to 'just write'. I shared my experiences to date which have been that it takes between 15 and 30 minutes to write an average 800 - 1,000 word blog each day and unless you are traveling long distances or end up in remote places with no internet there is only the minor matter of self discipline involved in producing a daily blog.

I got immediate follow up emails asking for 'tips' or 'pointers' to what methods I used to select 'topics' each day which I found difficult to do but said I had a routine of reading on line a number of financial and industry newspapers and magazines and several information sites before I started 'work' for the day which usually had an article that seemed appropriate to share and comment on with the unknown readers who might read what I wrote on any given morning. If nothing was of immediate interest then I said you just had to use whatever you were thinking about at the time - it works for me. I emphasised that a blog is not an 'official' company communication with all the constraints that go with such communications but the current thoughts/thinking of a person sharing those thoughts rather than that of a company representative stating official comments on behalf of the company.

I said that the value of a business blog was the feed back you got from people you would otherwise never 'talk with' and almost overwhelmingly people you have never met and never would meet in the course of your usual business activities. I am constantly surprised at the number of people from other countries that either comment or email me personally with ideas, suggestions and questions.  It varies a great deal but over any given month is usually above 5%.

I actually keep track of the number of suggestions made by people in response to this blog and I also keep track of the 'press' references to what I write here (at least those I see or am made aware of) and, over the past 20 months or so the figures are enlightening in determining the 'collateral value' of the time I spend each day here.

- There are now over 80 reader suggestions that we have implemented within Exetel that have improved our business

 - There are well over 100 'press references' to statements I have written here which are useful in making Exetel better known. 

 - The 'invitation' to make the breakfast presentation yesterday was from an "avid reader' and I've received more than a dozen other such invitations which lead to meeting people you otherwise would never know about.

 - I have also received more than 200 emails from companies that have products or services they think may be of interest to Exetel and we have taken up three of those.

I conveyed these details to the enquirers and received an enthusiastic "thank you" from both so perhaps many people in business are unaware of the possible very positive values of 'business' blogs - as indeed I was until an old friend was kind enough to show me the error/ignorance of my lack of understanding.

Having had the values of writing a regular blog explained to me (and then seen the suggested values work out in practice for both me personally and for Exetel) I've attempted to pass on that valuable advice whenever the opportunity has presented itself (as in the current scenario). I think, at least to date, my personal advice and enthusiasm has had little/no practical results as I've yet to see anyone I've recommended business blogging to actually do it, with three exceptions which didn't last past the first one or two entries. I am obviously a poor persuader.

I'm not sure how else I can better encourage those people who are interested to actually do it. Perhaps it's similar to process automation and VoIP - everyone can see the clearly articulated and obvious benefits but very few CEOs want to involve themselves in making it happen.

John Linton

I attended a 'breakfast' meeting today as the guest speaker to a group of medium sized business senior executives on how to use internet 'technology' to improve your survival chances in 2009. There were a little over 30 attendees and the 'meeting' was arranged by one of the large accounting firms and, very tastefully, hosted at one of Sydney's nicer harbour side restaurants - so it wasn't a major imposition to attend - for me at least.

I spoke for a little under 40 minutes and my address was based on a questionnaire I had handed out as the attendees arrived and which they could either fill out, or not, as I made my points. I based my address, and therefore the questionnaire, on two aspects of using the internet:

1) VoIP

2) Automating customer/potential customer contacts

On a show of hands less than one third of the attendees were using VoIP in their businesses and of the ones that were using it none were using VoIP beyond the simple outbound call reduction cost basis - half of whom were not totally satisfied with what they had achieved in either savings or quality.

As I went through the most basic uses of internet to 'sell' services, take orders, provide order status feedback and then provide support and assistance, checking by show of hands how many companies attending used these elementary functions the number of companies who did fell from 100% that had a web site and then approximately halved as I talked about each successive function to zero for the last three 'layers' of web automation.

My 'presentation' was based on using the Exetel web site and User Facilities and Forums to illustrate the web usage functions and a loud speaker phone to demonstrate the VoIP functions and, especially, the call quality. The reactions were quite extraordinary - by the end of the presentation I felt like David Copperfield in a Las Vegas theatre pulling off one amazing illusion after another - so new to almost everyone present (including the host accounting firm personnel) were the simple things I showed them over less than 40 minutes.

I got a great deal of pleasure from, apparently, opening the eyes of so many 'senior executives' to what I would think most people in the communications industry would regard as quite prosaic and 'old hat' uses of web based process automation and the simpler aspects of Asterisx VoIP PABXs - but that was, apparently, not the case for the attendees or for, according to the accounting firm, the vast majority of medium to medium/large businesses who are their clients.

My last question was what a company should pay for a fast company internet service and I gave some examples (on the screen) of Exetel's Ethernet pricing. The overwhelming response was that no-one attending the breakfast knew which provider they used or how much they paid for either their internet or, for those that used it, their VoIP.

I closed the presentation by saying that what I had showed them of Exetel's web and VoIP automation currently saved Exetel around $A100,000 a month in opex but was only possible if the CEO was continually involved over a period of at least 2 - 3 years in the processes of deciding what should be done or at least gave his authority to allowing the changes that automation requires to be made. I also said that we were actually using more resources today to further automate our systems than we had ever used since we started the process some five years ago. As the event was running very late there was no time for meeting the attendees individually, even for a few moments - something for which I was grateful.

As I drove away from the venue I thought about what this meant, if anything, in terms of how business is done in Australia (or at least Sydney) today. I didn't come to any conclusion other than to think that nothing seems to have changed in the use of technology in many Australian companies since I first sold a computer more than 40 years ago - the CEO isn't really interested and makes some generic/money based budget decisions and then leaves it to his "IT Department".

I couldn't help thinking that maybe it's only some, from what I've seen certainly not all, communications companies that really effectively use the products and services we base our revenue plans on?

John Linton

Back in Australia, a five and a half hour time difference certainly makes getting out of bed more difficult than usual especially on a strangely grey and chilly 'summer' day in Sydney. I caught up with the Australian financial and technology press which did nothing to brighten the day and thought about what could be done over the coming week - nothing new came to mind. So a strangely flat return home.

I can't seem to detect any new 'initiatives' from the various carriers and service providers in the industry press and if I scan the 'news sections' of those companies they are totally bereft of anything even vaguely interesting with many having no real recent entries at all. Perhaps the forecasts of increasing financial problems in Australia has caused this or maybe there simply are no more ways of presenting the same services when no underlying changes have taken place for so long I've lost track of when the last one was?

I suppose I'm becoming a victim of my often stated view that 2009 won't be a very 'exciting' year in Australia and it would be a good time to go to the UK and take the series of risks involved in setting up an HSPA business in the EU. From my recent discussions with people in UK telecommunications things are really very, very tough in the UK and there are major problems for not only the smaller service providers but for the main carriers with whatever different business models they have had in place during the UK's boom times totally failing to deliver as the recession in the UK worsens.

Right now we could buy HSPA data at less than 0.15 pence per megabyte and get a Layer 2 connection plus interconnects at the 12 UK aggregation points for zero set up and the first two years transit charges from those points at effectively zero. When I look at the end user costs being charged by the more aggressive UK providers I don't see any change, except slight increases, from the charges being made while we were in the UK last July. As, presumably, the carrier charges for HSPA have gone down in line with what Exetel is now being offered I'm not sure what to make of this lack of change - the only thing I can think of is that the prices we are now being offered were already in place back in mid 2008 for the current service providers.

I am now very tempted to find a way of seeing whether there is some way of 'testing the UK market' for some better idea of whether we could provide services there competitively. I keep re-calculating the costs based on firm pricing offers and my best guesses at the other costs we would incur and the numbers now make a lot of sense (assuming we could actually sell in the UK in the volumes we would need to do).

With the HSPA buy prices on offer, and a 14.4 mbps service that will, according to my contacts, deliver a pretty consistent 8 mbps in most of the UK you can put together a series of plans that will out perform any current UK provider's plans by quite a margin. The per gb data costs are less than one third of what we are currently paying in Australia (of course we have only just started here and have only sold a tiny number of connections) but the UK pricing BEFORE we have sold ONE connection makes it possible to sell an 8 mbps HSPA service at below the cost of the equivalent ADSL2 service in Australia!! It also makes it possible to sell an HSPA service at well below the current UK offerings from the aggressive service providers and still make considerably more money than we do in Australia.

So, I remain puzzled at why with sales 'plunging' (my contact's description) and obviously very low carrier pricing on offer the end user pricing hasn't changed at all downwards and, if my 'research' is correct - have actually drifted slightly upwards. Perhaps the answer is also provided by my UK conacts who are losing wholesale customers at an increasing rate and are holding doubtful debts long after they should have cut their losses. From what they say, and from what I can see, all the aggressive suppliers in the UK use the same two approaches neither of which is likely to provide a profit:

1) Saturation advertising with "free" splattered everywhere

2) Selling through "High Street" retail chains which decimates their margins

My principal concern is taking scarce management and development resources away from our very small Austalian company to do the work that is necessary to even trial the level of interest. and to involve the 'infant' SL operation in providing the support and other services. 

Something interesting to think about.

John Linton

...as Cher sung a very long time ago but I don't think then she was referring to the scummier types of, or in fact some very large, telecommunications providers:

http://www.accc.gov.au/content/index.phtml/itemId/861396

The few references in this government web site, while shaming companies such as TPG and Tel.Pacific is only the tip of the iceberg of blatant lying in the promotion of telecommunications service charges.

Before Exetel started offering calling cards I wrote some rambling account here of how I was simply amazed at the bare faced lies that so many calling card providers in Australia used in the promotion of their particular brands. I made those comments after testing more than half a dozen different brands and finding that NONE of them actually delivered the number of minutes claimed for each different card - best result was barely above 50% of the promised minutes - worst result was 12% of the promised minutes.

Similarly, I have never been entirely sure what it actually costs to make a call on so many advertised mobile services and, anyone who has read some of my past maunderings would know that I think virtually EVERY mobile carrier goes well out of their way to confuse, if not straight out mislead, potential buyers via their advertising.

Which brings me to the stange case of the major carrier's wholesale order processing system that not only didn't 'bark in the night' it was out of operation for more than 48 hours. I have no idea how the largest telecommunications company in Australia can have a mission critical computer system (LOLO = used by all customers of Telstra Wholesale to submit end customer orders for, in Exetel's case, ADSL1 services) that just dtops working and Telstra's response is "we have no update on when it will become available".

I guess the recent furore caused by the strange 'off air' problems by iPrimus in their Melbourne Data Centre followed by days and days of failing to restore some of its own services was a massive condemnation of that company's network architecture and 'disaster recovery' strategies but what on Earth can have gone wrong within a carrier the size of Telstra for a key B2B interface to be 'down' for over two days?

Personally, I can't think of ANY set of circumstances that would allow a run of the mill part of any network to go down and stay down for over two days - but then again I'm not a network engineer. Based on the fact that it actually happened this week there oviously is a circumstance/set of circumstances where this could happen but Telstra seems loathe to spell out what happened and, as is always required, what has been done to prevent such an event re-occurring.

The 2 days down time didn't seem to affect BigPond though.

Perhaps the iPrimus and now Telstra major outages of key network components is just a sign that the telecommunications industry infrastructures may be going the way of the finance industry in that they have been mismanaged for so long they eventually irretrievably break and can't be repaired? Unlikely - but it might be nice to know why such things happened.

Then I'm reminded that Telstra, who had placed three credit default notices on Exetel's VEDA credit rating report removed them this week after being threatened with legal action but did so without a hint of an apology for their actions in wrongfully damaging Exetel's business reputation. Typical arrogant behaviour by that company but we won't leave it there.

So is the communications industry 'out of control' as that plaintive ACCC web site inferring? Are things so competitive that lying advertising, false service specifications, anti-competitive behaviour and 'strange' occurrences are becoming the norm?

It seems a pity to be returning to Australia tomorrow to become directly involved in all these insalubrious carryings on after a very pleasant few days of only upbeat events and communications.

As Malcolm Fraser so pompously once said..............

John Linton

We will be heading back to the airport in an hour or so having completed a hectic schedule of meetings and discussions with our own employees, our SL accountants, various government agencies, our landlords and different contractors and the twelve 'short listed' candidates for the position of Exetel SL GM over the past 5 days.

Any one of ten of the GM candidates would be suitable for the position and five of that ten would be outstanding. Making a decision between the 'short listed' five is not easy for many reasons with the principal reason being that two of the five would be ideal for where Exetel wants to be in 9 - 12 months time but would not be ideal for where we are now and what needs to be done while the other three would be superb for what needs to be done over the coming twelve months but would not be as skilled/'contact rich' as the two more senior in experience people.

Because of the very different tax and other payment issues that exist in SL we will ned to pay more than we had originally 'budgeted' but well within what we would be happy to pay. However there are some issues about how allowances and 'packaging' works in SL that we need to much better understand and then 'overcome'. We will obviously need expert advice on these isses as well as the preparation of the employment contract.

We will need to make a decision over the next day or so as two of the candidates have aready been offered jobs which they have delayed accepting while awaiting the outcome of their application to Exetel - which again poses no issue other than us needing to make a decision - I commented to the KPMG Personnel person who had organised the advertising and first interviews that if we put the names in a hat and drew one out we would be just as likely to make the best decision and save endlessly discussing the various pluses and minuses.

The same 'too many good choices' scenario arose from Annette's interviews with our current 16 Sri Lankan staff. She found each one of them to be of very high calibre and thoroughly nice human beings with a lot of enthusiasm and a desire to do as well as they could within Exetel. We needed to 'promote' two people to Shift Supervisors to relieve poor Martin of the need to go to bed before 8 pm each evening so that he can be at the office before 3 am each morning to be on hand for SOB in Colombo and to begin the transition to the SL company being fully managed by local personnel.

We also needed to select two team leaders - one to be in charge of 3 new people we will be hiring over the next week or so to be specifically dedicated to handling residential sales enquiries and another one to be in charge of 'escalated faults' once we hire a further three CSRs to handle the growing work load we expect to generate over the coming months. As we grow we will also need to select a person as the Provisioning team leader and further down the 'track' a Billing issue team leader.

With the additional six new hires the SL personnel will have grown to 22 local engineers by the end of March - some 9 months after we opened the Colombo office. So far we are 'on track' to meet our plans of having thirty people in the Colombo office before the end of calendar 2009 with no 'back office functions' being performed in Australia in 2010.

There are of course no certainties in any aspect of business in 2009 with SL beginning to suffer like the rest of the world from the shock waves of financial mismanagement throughout the world's banking and financial systems and the ever turbulent political situation togeter with the 'end' of the 25 year old civil war in the North East. Doubtless we have had our period of trouble free and incredibly smooth transition and may well face some significant issues over the coming months - but so far I couldn't be more impressed with what first James and now Martin (and the other Exetel people who have come to SL on specific knowledge transfer assgnments) have achieved in such a short space of time.

As usual we will be sorry to leave Colombo as it is a really nice place with truly nice people.

John Linton

......and one of the few good things is that supplier's metaphorical 'pencils' get sharper because they dont meet their business targets.

It doesn't take much knowledge of elementary business for a sensible person to realise that as business conditions get tougher weaker busineses fail and as weaker businesses fail the suppliers to those businesses take a one off write off of any outstanding debt and then a reduced monthly revenue as the failed customer no longer buys from them. This then puts pressure on their revenue targets and their profit targets.

The only solution, apart from lowering their targets (and suffering all the pain that goes with that), is to look for new business and, much easier to do, look to increase the volume of business that the remaining customers do - pretty obvious. The businesses that remain are dealing with the same 'market slow down' but are 'gifted' less competition by the weaker companies ceasing to exist and their customers having to seek new suppliers. Again - all pretty obvious.

So, Exetel, although a tiny buyer from our suppliers does have one advantage - we pay our bills in full and on time and have dealt with our main suppliers for getting on for five years and in some cases for over five years. While I wouldn't describe our relationships with our suppliers as fantastically friendly (we have had to endure some pretty outrageous slings and arrows over the years) they are generally cordial (with the exception of Telstra) and we do get some good deals every now and then when they particularly need to 'repair' their revenue outlooks.

For some time now, basically since the beginning of the year, we have been receiving more attention from several suppliers which we always assumed would lead to 'better things' over time and that has certainly been the case in some minor ways that has allowed us to, rather than having to increase our prices, be able to pass on reduced costs to our current and new customers in a continuing, small but steady, flow of additional 'content' and in some cases lower prices.

So far this year we have been able to:

Increase the number of free SMS from 20 to 30 on every broad band plan

Add 20 free faxes via broadband to every broadband plan

Increase the value of calls in the mobile capped plans quite substantially while leaving the price the same

Add a small data allowance to all mobile capped plans without increasing the plan costs

Reduce the cost of many overseas calls despite the problems with the dollar

Increase the 12 midnight to 12 noon included downloads fro 48 gb to 54 gb

Maintain the 12 hour 'off peak period' when so any other 'copiers' are decreasing their already less than useful hours

Increased the Pioneer Discount by $A2.50 per person

and now we have been able to slightly increase the 'peak' allowances on some plans while reducing some ADSL2 plan costs by $5.00 and $10.00 per month.

This has been made possible by two things that has characterised the difference between Exetel's way of operating and almost all other 'commercial companies' which are that we are not in business to make as much money as possible, only enough to ensure our suppliers are comfortable with our balance sheet, and so when we receive cost reductions from our suppliers we invariably pass those benefits on to our users rather than increasing our monthly profits.

I don't pay much attention to what other ISPs in Australia do but I haven't been made aware that there is much end user price reducing going on and there isn't a shadow of a doubt that all of the much larger ISPs than Exetel would have been 'given' the same or much larger cost reductions from their wholesale suppliers which are pretty much the same suppliers who supply to Exetel.

So - good news for Exetel customers (perhaps the accusations of being very poor at looking after our customers have some holes in them?) and hopefully the tough times will produce lower communications charges for end users across the board.

I mean - all these other ISPs are SO superior in their service offerings to their customers they would have to pass the current round of cost savings on wouldn't they - I'm told that they treat their customers so much better than Exetel does - of course those statements have some degree of lack of credibility based on the sources.

John Linton

.........when you clearly have absolutely no customer handling skills?

Someone sent me an email today asking why I was so incompetent in this key aspect of business management and why "my superiors" didn't fire me for my attitude to customers. Apparently his/her understanding of the relative status of a CEO who also happens to be a majority shareholder vis a vis the ability of anyone to "fire" him was obviously lacking. 

My personal contribution to "helping Exetel customers" consists of:

1) Working the best part of 16 hours each week day, and over 8 hours each Saturday, Sunday and public holiday (except Christmas Day), on a wide variety of tasks that are all focused on delivering better services at lower prices than any other provider in Australia to Exetel's current and future customers.

2) Personally helping over 60 customers a day in the ways in which I am competent via direct email, forum or telephone contact (incidentally a higher number than we expect our CSRs to help).

3) Answering and writing another 200 emails each week day and 50 each weekend day dealing with various internal and external issues that relate to improving the services provided to Exetel's customers.

So, the short answer is that the person running any small business that lasts some sort of significant length of time usually understands very well how to handle all sorts of things and that includes how to communicate with other human beings. I stress that communicating with other human beings is the key aspect of all aspects of business and conferring different stati on different human beings using some arbitrary tags such as "Supplier", Customer" or "Employee" is a stupid and totally pointless distinction.....and one that my personal upbringing and education ensured that I would never make the mistake of attempting to do.

This particular enquiry about my "customer handling" skills was prompted by me posting on the Exetel forum a letter I had written to an Exetel customer who had made a complaint about four separate Exetel support engineers and who had then elaborated 'her' list of all things incompetent about those four Exetel engineers on a public forum. In the event that the details of what I said in the original response to the complainant and then my subsequent 're-clarification' of some other points are relevant to someone reading this they can be found here:

http://forum.exetel.com.au/viewtopic.php?f=288&t=30804

While I may be biased in reviewing the words written (being the author) I would think that an impartial reader would deem them to be courteously and moderately phrased in circumstances where one person is claiming that four other people acted in ways that each of the four other people categorically denied. The only collateral documentation/facts supported the four people's versions of events while contradicting the complainant's version in several key aspects. The other claims/statements by the complainant, judged on their standalone self determination, indicated that the complainant was far from correct in 'her' views on how ADSL connections work or how major carriers treat weekends and public holidays.

My personal views of individual people is that everyone should be treated with elementary courtesy until they clearly give up their rights to be treated in that way by their own actions/statements. I have been brought up to believe that no distinction can be made in dealing with other human beings irrespective of their age, gender, race or any other attribute. In other words no individual human being has any specific claim on how they should be regarded or treated other than how they conduct themselves. Not quite an OT "eye for an eye" view of relationships but its less violent social intercourse equivalent.

I have written over 550 entries to this blog during the past 20 months and over 12,000 Exetel forum replies and statements over the past 5 years and it should be obvious to anyone who had ever read what I write, and how I write it, that my view of the people I write for is that they are adults and that they have the same rights to express themselves as I do. Neither party has any claim of 'special privileges' in any dialogue - interchanges are between adults expressing their views - and in some cases choosing to express their views in ways that other people may not deem appropriate.

I don't regard anyone as a "Customer" when they write whatever it is they choose to write - I simply look at what is written and make my own personal determinations of what I think has been stated - and sometimes I make a guess at why statements have been made - by a human being.

In the latest case of some sensitive soul taking exception to how I treated a "customer" - get over it - anyone who maliciously attacks four people whom I am familiar with in public is not going to be meekly allowed to spread their lies and other calumnies without me taking exception to their cowardly rantings. While people I employ might not be my best friends or members of my immediate family I am certainly not going to allow them to be defamed by some random a**hole simply because 'she' thinks she can say whatever 'she' likes.

If running a business means letting a**holes demean the people you employ because they are a "customer" then the world has become a place that I'd rather not be associated with. Paying a few dollars less for the lowest priced broadband services in Australia confers no status or ability on anyone other than saving a few dollars a month - it certainly doesn't provide a license to behave like a total d***head.

So, I guess, I'm incapable of running a commercial business - unfortunately, at least right now, I see no other alternative so Exetel's 90,000+ customers will have no option in replacing the current CEO but, of course, have an easy remedy for any dislike they may have of how Exetel is managed.

John Linton

.....in it's latest attempt to kill off the 'NBN'?

Maybe it's because I'm in a third world country that this item from today's online SMH made such a telling point:

http://business.smh.com.au/business/transpacific-on-the-nose-with-shareholders-20090216-898s.html

Telstra alternative

Telstra will again be spruiking its plan B today - after it was kicked out of the Rudd Government's tender for a national broadband network two months ago.

The telco is expected to announce in Sydney the roll out over the next two months of what it describes as the "fastest wireless broadband network in the world".

Telstra's alternative strategy has entailed shifting its fixed-line customers on to both its cable infrastructure - which can deliver broadband speeds of up to 30 megabits per second in Sydney and Melbourne - and its wireless NextG network.

Pretty much the Lanka Telecom approach to providing a communications network for Sril Lanka - where you can get up to 40mbps fibre in the two main cities and 14.4 mbps HSPA pretty much everywhere else....and this 'model' is being repeated in more than a dozen poorer or geographically challenged countries around the globe at the moment. It seems the perfect solution to Australia's 'geographical issues' as well as not costing the Australian taxpayers anything - of course my views are biased as I have been saying this since those loonies in the ACT attempted to deliver on their election winning sound bite policy which they have been unable to back away from.

It will be interesting to see what happens now with Telstra clearly signalling that if the government goes ahead and tries to build a rival network to Telstra's current monopoly it will have do its costings based on having no current Telstra customers which, of course, are the majority of all Australian customers particularly in rural and regional areas. On the face of it a nice 'come back' and it may even work as Krudd and Stupid Stephen are so pig ignorant and bereft of communications knowledge (and presumably knowedgable advisors based on the fact that those advisors appear to be incapable of preventing Krudd and SS from making their ridiculous statements).

The big problem with this Telstra 'strategy' (which even they must soon admit is simply an 'NBN' "spoiler") is that to price their fast fibre and HSPA data services at points that will compete with some sort of eventual NBN would be almost impossible for them to prevent their customers making their own decisions to move to an alternative. If in fact Telstra did decide to offer fibre and HSPA at prices that woud compete with an 'NBN' then they will succeed in protecting their monopoly while sending Optus down a doomed infrastructure investment path that will cripple it forever and also giving themselves five more years of not having to provide data services at sensible prices.

So Krudd and SS have yet another problem, albeit a bluff, to deal with in costing just how much a NBN will really cost and how much they will have to kick in of taxpayer's money just to get the process started. As they have proved themselves completely incapable of grasping the requirements ofany aspect of government to date there is little reason to expect a sensible decison on the 'NBN' which, the way its going is going to ensure that Telstra's monopoly is enshrined for at least the rest of my life time. This brief article proides why Telstra's B Plan won't work:

http://www.cablefax.com/technology/news/Study-FTTH-Revenue-Tops-DSL_34080.html

Nil Desperandum - hopefully this bunch of doctrinaire, lunatic incompetents will continue digging their own grave and despite their growing in frequency choruses of "it's not our fault it's the GFC" this three years of the worst federal government mismanagment since Whitlam destroyed Australia's economy for twenty years will be over in 18 months time and the new coalition government can put a stop to the whole fiasco and subsidise the three mobile carrier's LTE networks in rural and regional areas and consign Telstra's monopoly to an end in that sensible way.

Perhaps that's too much to hope for?

John Linton

......capital city of a third world country with a 25 year old civil war continuing to rage.....

....I am writing this blog on a 14.4 mbps HSPA connection that costs me less than Exetel's Australian offerings and, as always, being away from the immediacy of the second by second operation of a demanding business your thought patterns and perspectives begin to change.

I was interested to read this:

http://business.smh.com.au/business/aapt-tieup-looms-20090213-873b.html

having read something very similar while I was in Auckland in early January. As a customer of both AAPT (via the Powertel takeover) and Vodafone, Exetel would really like to see this happen as I imagine would AAPT's residential customers. The brief article alludes to the obvious operational benefits that could be derived from such a merger/takeover eventually but it would make more competitive sense to have three largish carriers covering the full range of data and telephony services although, as always, there is some risk of just using the Telstra umbrella pricing concept to actually reduce competition and competitive pricing.

Not that anything is going to change in a hurry even if such a merger did go ahead with the need to first merge the '3' and Vodafone mobile networks and then the further need to do the same with AAPT's separate fibre and other back haul networks. At least AAPT doesn't lose money so there wouldn't be the need to 'slash and burn' to the same extent that there will probably be in integrating the '3' operations......not that I'd know.

One of the things that I've always liked about technology is the fact that it acts like the old socalist concepts of death duties in the late 19th/early 20th centuries - in their case it was to break up the hereditary power of the landed gentry by forcing them to break up their estates which, over three generations pretty much accomplished that. In technology's case it does some thing similar with incumbent monopolies by rendering the basis of their monopolies obsolescent (earned in the case of a company like IBM or Microsoft) or unearned in the case of a 'company' like Telstra.

In Telstra's case they have pursued the 'triple play' concept of using the base carrier platform of owning the Australian wireline network to play ducks and drakes with the pricing of that network to accrue the additional revenues of telephone, data and entertainment revenues to themselves. That made logical sense as long as their telephone network remained essential to the delivery of telephone calls, data transmission and entertainment.

Mobile telephony, VoIP and now HSPA have all radically changed that mix and not only that have begun to render the deployment of the wire lines owned by Telstra less important but there is some real sign that the monopoly is moving towards the true end of their useful life. Obviously it won't happen tomorrow but irrespective of whether or not there is some attempt to build an "NBN" there is a true likelihod that Telstra will join the dinosaurs of commercial (and I use the word loosely) enterprise before the end of the next decade - they will no longer exist not only as a monopoly but their ludicrously high pricing and their predatory methods of operation will have, by their own actions, driven them to the extinction those actions always produce in the end.

Maybe I'm totally wrong but, it does seem to me, that technology's inexorable progress is opening up more than a few cracks in the impermeable dam that Telstra has placed as a barrier to technology progress in communications in Australia and those trickles down the giant wall of sloth and avarice (sorry for the mixed meaphors) have every indication of becoming stronger and the cracks larger.

Wishful thinking? Probably - but the sun is beginning to rise over the, non-metaphorical ocean I can see above my lap top's screen and I'm about to start a work day in a country where there is no Telstra and Exetel isn't regarded as a parasite but as a welcome contributor to the country's economy.

It gives you a very different view of yourself, your company and what you can do with your working day.

For the benefit of all Australians and the end to 100 years of carpet bagging - Telstra Delenda Est (apologies to Scipio the Elder)

John Linton

We arrived in Singapore for an overnight stay yesterday evening (there are  no was of getting to Colombo from Australia without long connection times) so we used the hotels internet and caught up on the local HSPA scene which has further develope since we were here in the second half of 2008.

My local HSPA service now connects at over 11 mbps and according to the service provider's web site they expect to get to over 20 mbps in the second half of 2009. Their data prices have also halved since we were here last year, not that's saying much as its a very expensive low usage service that I bought to trial just before we 'went live' in Australia. As with the Australian service it delivers 'perfect' VoIP for me and the speed is twice what I currently get from the Opus/Exetel service in Sydney (around 5 mbps).

I noticed this article about Telstra's imminent 'release' of a 21 mbps upgrade to their Australian HSPA service:

http://www.itwire.com/content/view/23225/127/

which will be interesting to see just what they make available and where and what new data rates they will provide when they do activate it. I suppose it will be even more interesting to me to see what Optus and Vodafone do in terms of the capabilities of their HSPA netwrks and how they disentangle themselves from each other in terms of their capital city sharing arrangements.

I won't have time to find the right people to talk with at the HSPA supplier here but it's very high on my priority list to increase my knowledge of just what LTE wil provide in the EU and how the 'user density' arguments against LTE being the ultimate broadband data network for residential users really stack up. As I've said before I had no problems using HSPA at any time of the day or night in the centre of London which has a densely congregated populaion of UK residents and a huge number of visiting business users that is equivalent to half the population of Australia - but I would like some facts.

Exetel now has more than 1,500 HSPA users and, from what I can determine from our forums, emails direct to me and what our support people tell me, the overall satifaction with our version of the Optus HSPA service is overwhelming happiness - however these are very early days and I am basically only getting anecdotal feed back - except for my own use of both mobile VoIP and my note book - both of which have been flawless since I activated them. 

My view is that Telstra will make a huge effort to promote their version of HSPA if for no other reason that to show the Labor Government the error of their ways in disqualifying them from the "NBN" but also to attempt to increase their 'lead' over Optus and Vodafone in this key new market. Frankly, I will be surprised if Telstra can actually bring themselves to offer a high speed HSPA service with data rates that make it useful/even usable for the majority of users but Ive been surprised before.

I have never been able to work out why Telstra has continued to rip off all types of users from the smallest residential user to the very largest corporate user despite almost 20 years of 'competition'. I suppose in reality there never has been much competition with successive 'entrants (except in mobile) being content to use Telstra's 'pricing umbrella' to offer a slightly discounted version of Telstra's sky high pricing rather than go with a sensible cost+ pricing strategy.

This has been very much on my mind recently as we put in place our 'corporate' sales processes and, once again, realise that Exetel's base pricing for business users continues to be around 50% of the next lowest cost provider and remains at around 20% of the prices that Telstra offer business users even when they take their "whole of business" discounts in to consideration. Then I realise that the head of Telstra Wholesale, alone, is paid more money that the total of Exetel's annual payroll (in both Australia and Sri Lanka) and that's beore "performance bonuses". With overheads like that (and all it implies) it must be difficult to make a sensibly priced offering to an end user and of courseit's fortunate that their remain so many end user decision makers who are payng their Telstra bills with OPM - would it be a different story if they were using their own money?

It seems to me theat the biggest factor in the possible success that HSPA will have in replacing ADSL at the lower end usage levels is the fact that Telstra continues to ensure that ADSL2 is priced so ridiculously high and has now successfully gelded those timorous ISPs who started their own ADSL2 roll outs by signing them up as Telstra ADSL2 resellers while starting to push their HSPA higher speeds as logical replacements for ADSL2.

Something to ponder on.

John Linton

In a few hours we will head to the airport to make our fourth trip to Sri Lanka in just on 12 months. The principal reason for this trip is to hire a Sri Lankan national to become Exetel Sri Lanka's General Manager but we will also do the final interviews for a further four support engineers and look for an additional programmer. One of my last tasks yesterday was to send the letters of offer to another two graduate sales trainees having already offered jobs to two others over the previous few days.

So in less than 10 days Exetel will be have hired an additional ten people increasing by almost 25% the number of people employed by Exetel in both Sri Lanka and in Australia. A somewhat unusual circumstance for an Australian company in these interesting financial times and an unheard of personnel acqisition number for Exetel over the past five years over which period we consider adding two people in three months a rapid increase in our employees.

An interesting side note, particularly for those members of the political correctness gender police, is that all four of the graduate sales trainees are female! This increases the number of Exetel female employees from two to six - the highest absolute number and percentage ever! Though perhaps I will now be accused of gender discrimination in the opposite way to previously.

I have never found that female sales personel are ever any less capable than males and, in some ways, were often better because, irrespective of the gender police' moanings 'God' did genetically program males to respond to females more openly than, with some lower percentage of exceptions, he/she ever did to males. Not something the gender police can ever get round in their politically correct 'arguments' - take it up with 'God'.

However this isn't the major, or even the main, reason that applies when hiring recent graduates. The major reason, also something 'God' has put in place which is, of course, that a female of 21 or 22 is so much more mature than a male of the same age. Both reasons are generalisatons and it just happened that the four best candidates (in terms of the qualities we were looking for) just happened to be female - but I thought I'd point it out to those people who got so upset at one of my previous ramblings on the reasons for the gender imbalance in Exetel's staffing.

As I always am when hiring in Sri Lanka, I was very impressed with the resumes of the 'short list' of people provided by the recruitment agency we used to do the 'job search' for a general manager. I wish I could be presented with such a short list for an Australian General Manager. I suppose twelve people isn't really my idea of a 'short' list but the search company had to be 'persuaded' by Annette to reduce their original suggestion of 19 as being far too many. Perhaps it had something to do with the fact that they had well over 150 applicants for the position. Based on the resumes any one of the twelve would be more than suitable for the position and there are, at least on paper and based on the search company's interview/assessment notes, three outstanding candidates - one of whom coincidentally Annette and I met on our first visit to get the set up of the company under way last February.

In some ways I think we will actually have a problem in finding the right person as, at least in my view from only reading the resumes and the accompanying notes, the candidates are over qualified for the job and may find the limitations of the duties 'boring' as the company is so small and limited in its current scope and will continue to be that way unless/until we can persuade the Sri Lanka Board Of Investment to allow us to widen the scope of the activities we undertake in Colombo - something I will begin to address next week but, based on my previous dealings, will take a considerable time to accomplish if it can be accomplished at all.

It will be a very busy week in Colombo with also a great deal happening in Australia over the next few days with the training and 'integration' of the first four corporate sales trainees and our 'last throw of the dice' to convince some 15,000 ADSL1 users to 'migrate' to ADSL2 services as well as getting our fring replacement VoIP over HSPA service fully functional and the PSTN number to VoIP capability put in  place as well as...........

.........Lucky we aren't also suffering from the enormous pressures of a recession with all these new projects to occupy our time.