John Linton I finished working on the remaining 'loose ends' of our changes to various aspects of our 'product line ups' yesterday morning and we will now make decisions on what we do to improve our mobile, VoIP and wireless data services for 'release' by May 1st (having comprehensively missed the April 1st dead line). It has taken a lot longer than I thought it would partly because of the constant changes in those market areas and partly because of our inability to obtain improvements in our 'component' costs from our suppliers or prospective new suppliers.
We have one further meeting with a possible new provider today which is a long shot in terms of any advantages to what we currently have a need for but may prove more useful in the future if they do decide to do 'real things' in Australia having made some half hearted attempts in the past but never achieving very much. With the current carriers focus on how they can get money from the government during the new 'investigation phase' of Krudd's latest fantasy "No Broadband Now" election promise breaking distraction maybe there is a chance for a new carrier to make some 'waves' in the Australian market and stir up the increasingly stolid status quo - not much of a chance but some chance perhaps.
I had hoped to be able to reduce our current mobile offerings by around 30% for business users and 15% to 20% for residential users and may still be able to do that but not with the required level of 'comfort' that we would have liked to have seen and be able to have a 'safety net' for. However I guess we'll just have to factor in more 'risk' than we would normally do to be able to meet the price points and content required by the majority of today's users.
Similarly, apart from the modem prices, we haven't been able to do much in terms of reducing the costs of HSPA services though, again, we should be able to improve their wider appeal from May onwards by taking more risk ourselves. We had planned to do some, for us, significant amount of promotion this month but we encountered some unexpected concerns over the past week and I put that on hold pending their resolution. However we now need to proceed more 'forcefully'. The lack of the 'magic box' remains a barrier but we inch ever closer to finding the exact product that is needed to make this more widely appealing.
So we will make some changes to the HSPA plans by COB on Friday of this week and then change the mobile and VoIP plans by COB on Friday next week with lower end user prices on all of those services - not of the magnitude we had hoped for but significant nonetheless.
Like every other provider, I assume, I continue to be impressed with the rate of VoIP take up and the increasing use by both residential and business customers who make the move away from their PSTN/ISDN land lines. Exetel has run all of its business via VoIP for over two years now and I have done the same at home and for the past six months or so on my mobile. I can't tell the difference in quality between a VoIP call and a 'standard' call and I very much doubt that anyone else can - on either my mobile or the office phones in Sydney and Sri Lanka and my home phone. I suppose the only surprising thing now is that any sensible person uses the 'standard' telephone services at all these days.
I find myself using HSPA more and more even at home and although it seldom operates at much above 1 mbps I really can't notice any difference between my home ADSL2 and the 40 mbps connection at the Exetel North Sydney office. While I understand that my usage (no major downloading) is not 'typical' of many broad band users it is certainly typical of the heavy business user and someone who recreationally uses internet in every aspect of their personal life (except for stealing other people's property). I no longer use the internet connections supplied by hotels, both because of the price and the speeds, and have more and more often begun to use my note book when way from the office or home and have even started to carry a note book as a 'standard' item in my brief case. I notice more and more people using their notebook/laptop in coffee shops and pubs as well as on buses and trains.
It seems to me that there has been a change in internet use over the past three or so years towards mobility and the cost savings of VoIP and I also notice that in our monthly revenue streams with those services gradually becoming a larger proportion of our revenues each month. Our volumes are insignificant in a 'whole of market, context and our focus is more concentrated than the large companies so I'm not reading anything into that other than for many people an NBN2 (in the unlikely event it ever happens) will not very important for the majority of current or future broadband users. There appears to be an increasing similarity between the ways mobile telephony has replaced wire line telephony and the way that mobile data is beginning to become more important - even at this early stage of its development.
However Krudd seems to have fooled the stupider members of the Australian electorate with his latest insanely stupid lies just as he did with his original insanely stupid lie (does anyone remember how he promised a 98% national broadband coverage for $A4.7 billion dollars with the first areas switched on by October 2008???? and if they do, and have seen Krudd now say it would never have worked WHY ON EARTH do they go along with his latest lie????? - oh I forgot - they're stupid).
If there is anyone who hasn't become aware of this remarkable story it should lift your spirits:
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/minette_marrin/article6122594.ece