John Linton .....in the mealy mouthed way now common to Telstra...(long contract with "half price for first N months) aimed at the dumber buyers.
I seldom watch commercial television so I seldom see any current ads let alone Telco ads (has iinet stopped using that insulting Irish moron yet?) but saw an ad last night for what seemed to be a Telstra offer of unlimited HSPA for "half price" ($49.95) for 12 months (it may have been 10 gb.......I was only half listening at the beginning).
Three things crossed my mind:
1) Telstra's HSPA sales must have "hit the wall"
2) A really unlimited HSPA plan at $50.00 a month can't be that far off
3) The 'early adopter' phase of HSPA may have ended
Now I realise that no Telstra broad band offering will be "unlimited" (just as no sensible provider will ever offer an unlimited plan) but I wasn't paying attention to the ad until it was too late to register the real detail but it doesn't matter as the salient point was the desperation apparent in any offer that involves cutting an apparently previously obtainable price so drastically - even if it was only a 'pretend cut' specifically designed to mislead the stupider buyer.
However, Telstra has obviously got a much larger HSPA share than everyone else put together and also has far higher prices than every one else. Based on what I see and know about the UK HSPA markets and cost prices and the volumes of users, Australia's combined HSPA usrs are less than one fifth of those in the UK and the market there is more mature and more competitive. There are no, as far as I can see, "unlimited plans" in the UK but the 'average' HSPA plan is around half the cost of the realistic Vodafone and Optus plans. So clearly there is a lot of scope for Telstra to reduce its HSPA pricing, if it has to, and still make its huge margins.
We have hesitated in 're-looking' at how we would market HSPA from March 1st onwards and actually pushed back the original decision to more 'aggressively' push the HSPA service while waiting for the new initiatives from the carriers which, until last night, I haven't seen yet unless I'm looking in all the wrong places (there was a very old game that used that tag line I seem to remember). I doubt that Telstra's new initiative will 'change the landscape' in any significant way (personally I think it's a recognition by Telstra that they can't charge $100.00 a month for HSPA any more) and I think that $A50.00 is not, at the moment, going to address a large percentage of the (non-Telstra) HSPA buyers in Australia.
However that price point might be useful to Exetel as we don't have ambitions to sell the volumes the carriers are aiming at and we do want to address the two markets we believe we can provide the best solutions to. So the key question is how do we use our 'mad money' most effectively to promote a $A50.00 a month HSPA service (realising that the 'sweet spot' for an HSPA broadband service is $A40.00 a month)? Or is that just a waste of incredibly scarce time and money?
We have been considering different ideas for a while now and nothing really useful comes to mind given the constraints of our current costs. It seems boring, and deceitful, to make these "half price" offers becoming so beloved by both Telstra and Optus or their convoluted "six months free" or "every month with a public holiday in it free" or whatever lunacy the next "special offer" will include. Perhaps Exetel has to become a "modern marketer" and prey on the stupid/gullible/innumerate but I doubt whether I could ever bring myself to treat the more intellectually challenged of the Australian population with that level of contempt.
We have to make a decision this week and our options are currently limited. One of our original ideas, and my personal favourite, of offering rural users a 'free' Yagi aerial and cable kit has been blown out of the water by delays in sourcing the required hardware. I suppose we could still go with that sourcing aerials at their ridiculous local prices but the economics are very iffy. That particular idea appealed to me because I am very 'fond' of rural Australia and it seemed to me to be the most truly effective use of a promotion - to help people who really needed help and to assist Exetel's rural agents in a very tangible way.
Maybe I've run out of the required 'creativity' to deliver true innovations - it had to happen some time.
The best I can come up with is two new plans:
A 2 gb plan at $$22.50 per month
and
A 10 gb plan at $57.50 per month
to add to the current 5 gb plan at $37.50 per month.
I would like to be more imaginative but I seem to have lost that 'touch'.