Thursday, July 16. 2009Succession Planning Is Something That Is Essential......John Linton .....but for the life of me, and with no lack of trying, how to accomplish that in the best possible ways and in a reasonable time frame has proven beyond my efforts and understanding. Even a tiny company like Exetel, if it stays in business long enough, eventually grows to a size where you notice that it is much larger than you used to think and that it has become dependent on too few people for far too many aspects of its day to day operations to be 'safe'. We aren't stupid and we did recognise that this would become an issue that we would have to address some two years ago; perhaps before that but I really can't remember when I first raised the issue or the issue was first raised with me. In any event, over at least the past two years we have given an increasing amount of thought to how we would, financially sensibly, put in place a slightly different personnel infrastructure that would allow the company to be unworried if one or more key people decided to pursue their career elsewhere or, heaven forbid, accident or illness prevented them from continuing to discharge their responsibilities for some length of time. Earlier this year we promoted two of our earliest employees (almost exactly on their 5th 'anniversary' of their employment with Exetel) to the respective positions of CIO and CFO both in recognition of their dedicated performance in growing with Exetel through successive phases of what we have had to do and become and in recognition of their wealth of detailed knowledge about how increasingly complex and wide raging automation systems work and, more importantly, how they need to continue to evolve in the future. Those promotions eased the immediate planning and oversight burden on Exetel's directors but did nothing to address the 'succession planning' aspect of developing a 'safer' personnel operating hierarchy. Such a situation can only be brought about by having enough money to duplicate many personnel within any organisation which small companies simply don't have the ability to do because they simply don't have the money to do it nor the management skills that are required to split work loads in a way that keeps two very bright people either happy or gainfully employed. The other issue with small companies like Exetel is that small companies have to employ for their organisation structure which is one or two or some small number of founders and then hiring relatively or very inexperienced and often very young people who 'grow' into their jobs and acquire the skills and experience under that 'autocratic' management structure. This is far from an ideal structure to produce the required experience for management, let alone senior management positions. So there are only two, or maybe I have 'invented' a third, alternatives. The first is to 'buy in' one or more experienced managers at the levels required to manage all or part of a company the size of Exetel which is a problem given that Exetel has a very different management and operational basis than any other Australian company. I have made some attempts to do this over the past nine months but the resumes of the people deemed suitable by the two or three personnel agencies I've had discussions with are so far from what I think we need I've pretty much abandoned that scenario. The people with the apparent experience and skills wouldn't want to run a small company on skinny budgets and suffer the austere regimen that exists within Exetel and people with less than those skills would just not be able to do the job. The second method is the 'over-promote' crash through or crash theory of all very bright people can do anything given the chance and give inexperienced current employees the 'opportunities' to "show their worth". I have done that once in the past and watched it done differently by Jodee Rich at One.Tel some years ago - both had undesirable outcomes for different, but in some ways similar, reasons. My experiment with radical 'management fast tracking' was to write an outrageously phrased ad and run it in the main section of each States major broadsheet taking up one third of a page. The ad produced over 1,000 responses from which I hired 8 people and then ran an 18 months hands on General Manager training program which I was heavily involved in teaching many formal 'classroom courses' as well as spending a great deal of time sharing my experiences and knowledge of both the company and the industry and mentoring. The company also paid for the selected people to obtain an MBA at the university/management school of their choice. While the program achieved almost all the objectives set for it, other issues prevented it from being seen to be a success in the longer term. Jodee Rich took a different approach which was based on his enthusiasm for the views expounded by Ricardo Semler in his book "Maverick!" (any google search will give you any number of summaries). While I am not in the best position to judge the overall results of that program my personal observations were that it was a miserable failure - partly because Semler's 'scheme' addressed a completely different scenario to that which existed at One.Tel and, of course, the well established employee base at Semco in terms of skills and knowledge was totally different which removed a key attribute of that which was the main spring of success at Semco. In my 'despair' I've thought of a third way which is to buy a smaller company/ISP than Exetel which has an energetic CEO plus, possibly, one or two other managers with a deep knowledge of the industry and the future technologies who would not require the training and mistake making experiences of 2 and would eliminate most if not all of the problems with 1 above. However, it's obviously a long shot and while we will see what may be possible, I don't hold out much hope of that path proving to be the solution. However the clock continues to 'tick' and our luck can't last forever so we need to actually do something sensible in the near future. Wednesday, July 15. 2009Talk Is Cheap Unless It's A 1900 Number......John Linton .........but now it's action time and we are having to spend real money (at least for us) to make major changes to the ways we operate. We are only a few days away from the start of our HSPA data advertising campaign for rural/regional users in Queensland, NSW and Victoria and, as always, there is still a lot to do with very little time to do it. We approved the 'final version' of the ad yesterday morning which can be seen in its 'finished state' here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CGp2oMV7x1g and have got most of the main parts of the new country broadband web site on test here: http://www-dev.countrybroadband.com.au/ We will get the rest of the non-working pages working tomorrow and will then edit the rough draft text to at least one iteration closer to its 'final form'. The new site follows a completely different design to the current web site - partly because it has been designed to be simpler as well as being based on a single product/service and that product/service is provided via contacting an Exetel agent instead of by contacting Exetel. So a completely different kettle of fish and one we have embarked upon with a great deal of trepidation. Any way - onward and upward - second thoughts are for those didn't give a second and a third thought to what they were going to do before doing it. The separate web site is to give us an opportunity of both creating a separate 'identity' for our future country based focus and to determine how we might change some parts of the current web site. By changing many of our methods of operating over the balance of this financial year we hope to become more successful in meeting our overall aim of being in business as well as becoming more efficient in new ways we have not yet tested. We have been slowly growing and developing the services and resources we provide to our agents some of whom have now been working with us for almost as long as Exetel has existed. However basing a whole marketing program on third parties not 'controlled' by Exetel and spending more money up front to do that than we used to 'create' Exetel in January 2004 is a bit of a 'big adventure' for us. Our view is that the newish HSPA service and the future VoIP magic box services will require a much higher degree of 'hand holding' (paid for) than we can offer and aren't at all compatible with our web based, fully automated processes of providing the simple ADSL1 and ADSL2 services that we have been providing to residential users to date. I could be quite wrong but the view we are pursuing is to focus part of our resources on building our agent representation in rural and regional Australia far more quickly than we have in the past via several new programs including the advertising that only provides leads to rural/regional agents as well as new 'free' internet cafe agent program and a whole lot of new on line management tools for agents only...plus some new hardware when we finally get our hands on it. So we are proceeding on the basis that at some not too distant time in the future one third of Exetel's total business in Australia will be done through agents who would be overwhelmingly based in rural/regional areas of Australia and would be responsible for many of the things that Exetel itself currently does now. I realise that's a strange way to do things but then we have never had any interest in doing what other ISPs do - why bother with such a policy - if it's already being done what can a tiny company like Exetel add? I also think that the ***hole ratio to nice people is far lower in country Australia which encourages us to continue to do whatever is required to keep prices as low as possible for people who appreciate such efforts. If the new Country Broadband web site works out (pleases people/generates business/is easy to change) then we will look at splitting our current web site into three - Residential City, Business Australia and Agents Australia (perhaps 4 - a dedicated hardware sales part of the business) with a complete re-design along the lines of the new country web site. It is a very big change for us and something that makes me very apprehensive but with the big investments we are making in sales trainees and the requisite engineering support and research and other costs and it is probably past time that we should have put more effort in to our 'on line presence' for potential business users and make far more effort to promote some of our most interesting products and services.....and of course involve ourselves in marketing them. I believe we have done far too little to promote our exceptionally feature/function rich VoIP services that not only are rock solid reliable but, from what I've seen, offer far more than the largely generically boring offerings of the various other providers I have come across. This would also allow us to change the way the web site presents residential communications services as well as the overdue need to upgrade the agent web site. Despite what anybody has said in the past our current iterations of the web site that has created Exetel, it has delivered exceptional sales and support results each month we have been in business. However I have never had any aspirations as a web designer and, unfortunately or fortunately (depending on your viewpoint) I simply don't have the time I used to have to look at that aspect of our business objectively and even less time to remain involved in constantly updating it. Personally I would like to stay with some sort of front page that has some sort of 'message' and four links to the four (or 5) different aspects of our current business plus the ability to add in links to at least two new aspects of the future business should they actually become a reality. Then there's...........and so one thing constantly leads to another....and then that leads to another....which is why I suppose the years continue to disappear at an ever faster rate and one of the few remaining 'original' things that needs changing most about Exetel is me. Tuesday, July 14. 2009The More Things Change.....John Linton .........the more things stay the same. I was considering the impacts that Exetel has had on various aspects of our customers by our plan of providing 'free' downloads of gradually increasing magnitude in the 'off peak' periods of each day and just how much more is either necessary or possible to provide. We started providing this particular benefit on March 1st 2004 with "unlimited" downloads during the period 12 midnight to 8 am each day. Terming the download period as 'unlimited' was a major error of judgment and we lived with it's negative consequences for around a year trying to discourage a very small percentage of our users from down loading as much as possible every second of the available time with the most notorious of those people managing to download over 300 gb in that 8 hour period each month. This forced Exetel to cease offering 'unlimited' off peak downloads in early 2005/late 2004 (I really don't remember exactly when it was any more) and we made it 20 gb free in off peak before heavily constricting the 'bandwidth' in an attempt to prevent the manic few from continuing to swamp the bandwidth - something we never really succeeded in doing and eventually gave up trying to do. We finally admitted defeat and implemented charging for usage over the off peak bandwidth rather than constriction and that finally put an end to it - the few download addicts that remained at that time finally either changed their habits or moved elsewhere. Over the past five or so years we have gradually increased the included free down load allowance (from 20 gb to up to 60 gb today) and over that period our total deployed band width had grown to well over 4 gbps and our number of users quadrupled. With the progressively increasing down load amounts and the increase from 8 hours to 12 hours a day over several years the amount of 'free' download amounts continued to increase each month and towards the end of 2008 we actually achieved part of our starting objective of moving the peak download period from around 10 pm to exactly midnight which was a really useful achievement.....in many ways.....and totally useless in one major way. However the major negative, and it really is a major negative, is that too many customers start their downloads at exactly 12 midnight which creates a different problem that while there is no congestion in the 'traditional' peak hours of late afternoon to very late evening there is a new congestion period, albeit relatively brief, between 12 midnight and 12.20 am. We've made some efforts to eliminate this silly and pointless practice but have failed miserably to date. While we were very patient (5+ years is a lot of patience), taking a sensible long term view, and eventually achieving a very significant operational efficiency we can't be 'patient' any longer in terms of convincing our users that download managers mean that you don't have wait up to start downloads a midnight - use the lowest usage times of day from 2 am to 7 am - and make everyone happy including yourself and ensure that plan charges can continue to be offered at the lowest possible costs. We have two choices we can now make - one technical and one edictal - or perhaps we can use both which would ensure we make the problem 'go away' once and for all. We will try the technical solution towards the end of this month which involves splitting low volume users onto 'clear' bandwidth and therefore allow us to more tightly control P2P traffic during times of peak P2P usage and this, in theory, will eliminate the problem cased by the people who, for whatever reason(s) insist on starting P2P downloads at exactly 12 midnight. If that doesn't deliver the estimated benefits then the much easier option will be advised to customers which is to change the of peak period time from the current period of 12 midnight to 12 noon (which I personally really like for aesthetic reasons) to 1 am (or later) to 12 noon or later. I like that option because it will remove the problem 'forever' and not affect any Exetel customer in any real way or actually in any way. I suppose I would be sorry to lose the elegance of a 12hour/12 hour split in peak and off peak but it really makes zero difference to any actual user of off peak for their down loads. With the maximum 'free' off peak download allowance of 60 gb the period required is less than 5 hours per day on a 1500/256 ADSL1 service which would make a 6 hour (rather than a 12 hour) off peak period more than adequate to allow customers to down load the maximum of their free allowance each month. Moving from 12 midnight to 12 noon to, say 3 am to 9 am is a bit drastic as far as perception goes and doubtless that would be something to consider. However if nothing is now done it would result in increased costs to Exetel of around $A100,000 per month at today's customer numbers and usage which is only going to increase over the coming months. I don't like making decisions like this, or even participating in making them, but there may be no options if the technical resolution doesn't produce the hoped for results. I suppose the other even more radical option is to completely revamp the current plans that have these attributes and replace them with a complete set of plans where there are no peak or off peak periods and down loads are charged on a per gb basis. We have considered that in the past and will undoubtedly do it again. The issue would remain that it is highly desirable to use the 'dead time' of bandwidth usage which, irrespective of any tinkering with time zones across Australia, the low usage of band width between 2 am and 8 am 'wastes' a lot of money and adds an unnecessary cost to the business. It remains very sensible to attempt to recover this lost money as a serious cost saving for current and future customers. I am really looking forward to taking a break but it still looks so far away. Monday, July 13. 2009Is Krudd Too Old To Be Getting Married In The Near Future?John Linton Tomorrow our compliance manager will go to Sri Lanka for several weeks to ensure that the sales and support personnel are fully trained in the Australian government's requirements of what can and can't be said to a current or prospective customer and how they must deal with a variety of situations. A few days later Steve will go to Sri Lanka to run a two day course next weekend to add to the same people's skills in terms of better understanding Exetel's Australian network and how to use some new diagnostic tools. The two visits starkly contrast the difference between the attitudes and practices of the government of Australia and that of Sri Lanka. On the one hand the Australian government is forcing us to export 'red tape' and worthless bureaucracy (and making us pay a heavy price to do so). On the other hand the Sri Lankan government is making it as easy as possible for Exetel to provide additional, and highly skilled, technical and engineering training that will benefit both Exetel and Sri Lanka. While the 4 - 6 weeks training Larry will provide to some 20 or so Sri Lankan personnel will be of use to them (marginally) in their current jobs, but will be useless in any future job outside Exetel, the training Steve will provide will be another essential building block in better understanding network topology and how to manage a network and trouble shoot problems with networks generally which will be useful to them in their ongoing career whoever employs them. Following the two day training course Steve will attend a 'ceremony' to endow Colombo's best engineering university with two 'perpetual' scholarships ('perpetual' = provided each year for two students in each year of their studies) on an ongoing basis together with two internships that are an essential part of assisting Sri Lankan university students get through a university degree with the best results and with the least financial strain (providing them guaranteed paid employment in their vacations). He will also further the discussions involving Exetel providing the endowment of either a professorship or funding two, ongoing, PhD programs to further the knowledge/use of artificial intelligence in commerce. It's no wonder that so many start up businesses in Australia fail within their first 18 months and all but 1 or 2% fail to make it to 5 years. In this instance you have the Australian government placing significant burdens and quite large costs on Exetel to ensure that its personnel waste time on issues that can't possibly benefit the business in contrast to the Sri Lankan government who do everything possible to make it as easy as possible to operate a business and 'reward' you for doing that by giving you tax holidays, exemption to VAT (GST) and waiving all import duties. I wonder how many more companies would succeed in starting up in Australia if those burdens were removed? This current Australian government, and almost certainly many other governments around the world both currently and in past "difficult financial times" seem unable to grasp the fact that when income drops you have to adjust your previous expenditures to meet your now available income and while you can borrow to ensure you can continue to meet essential expenditures (mortgage for example) you will pay a hefty price for doing that and it really is better to now review the bad expenditure habits you (and previous governments if you're currently in government) have got you into. In the current worldwide fashion of "we've learned from past recessions that government should spend more to shorten the length of a recession and ameliorate the damage to people" the fact remains that even if you believe that the government should maintain or increase expenditure as current fashion dictates you should only borrow to spend on assets that will (eventually) generate enough return to pay the loans and interest back). Apparently Krudd not only doesn't understand that he believes in the reverse which leads me to why I wrote the heading to this meandering that I did. I came across the following article earlier this morning in USA Today (not on the girlie pages but my eye fell on it on the front page as I was going to check the baseball scores): http://www.usatoday.com/life/lifestyle/2009-07-07-recession-weddings_N.htm Not being a young female of marriageable age I have no idea of what angst would be caused by cutting your wedding budget by up to 70% but I think it would be a very, very tough call. (My one association with the details of a wedding showed me that the list was long and extensive and surprisingly expensive). However, clearly these young women have a much better grasp of financial management than the current prime minister of Australia. They obviously can see what would be really great to do (their previous planned expenditure arrangements that as legend has it so many young girls start planning from kindergarten) and what now should now be done. They obviously see the 'big picture' so much more clearly than Krudd - get married on schedule and get on with your life without putting yourself (or your parents - or both) into a whole heap of debt. Krudd's version - "I will continue to trip around the world making my nonsense non-contributions to groups of people who think I'm a trivial fool and borrow as much money as I can lay my hands on to buy as much time as I can screw out of the dummies I lavish it on to allow me to keep doing this". Par for the course for Krudd? Australians elected the phony flake so what else do you expect - common sense and a realistic view of economic management?? Oh well......I'm finally too old and worn out to give a damn. Perhaps one day we will have political leaders who actually understand that with election to Federal Parliament goes the responsibility to manage the economy in the best interests of the Australian people rather than to feather their own nests at the expense of the Australian electorate. Clearly that's not going to happen as long as Krudds are elected. Suggestions to prevent complete morons being elected to parliament in Australia: - Change the voting age to 25 - Ban Political parties - Put in place a 'candidate suitability' test that includes IQ (larger than their shoe size), literacy (able to spell 6 letter words correctly), numeracy (able to correctly add three 6 digit figures together in their head) and...... but what's the point? A TV presenter is more suitable than a lawyer with 30 years parliamentary knowledge in the Australian electorate's mind. Sunday, July 12. 2009Pity We Know Nothing About Selling Hardware....John Linton .......and even less about warehousing and fulfillment - always relying on suppliers to do that for us. I had two conversations with our contacts in the PRC and the EU yesterday about pricing for hardware. I didn't make much headway with either party but I learned a little more about pricing movements over the coming months and understood a little more about how possible it might be for us to improve the offerings we make to our agents and to those of our end customers who buy hardware through Exetel. We have never made a 'big deal' out of offering hardware to our residential end users contenting ourselves with trying to get a good buy price and then passing it on with a small mark up. In the early days, when a higher percentage of ADSL customers were 'new' it was helpful to have as large a percentage of inexperienced users as possible using modem hardware with which the support personnel were most familiar....but those days are long past. Things will begin to change again now as we move towards providing specific hardware both to our residential users and to our corporate users in terms of HSPa modems and accessories for residential users and higher end routers, VoIP 'switches' and SIP hand sets for our corporate users. Our first 2,000 Yagi antennae landed late last week and they will be the first of our attempts to 'advantage' our agents by going to the trouble to source specific hardware for our residential HSPA service at the lowest possible cost so they can make the highest possible 'add on' margin. Subject to reaching the various cost targets we ought to be able to ship a Yagi to an agent for less that $A35.00 but I need to check the final costs and work out the warehousing charges. We have almost completed the 'on line shop' software and logistical processes and will 'populate' the offerings on an ongoing basis starting next week with the agent facilities being done first as the date for the start of the regional/rural TV advertising is now only a week away. Our initial objective is to provide one or two 'exclusive' items with the other items being Netcomm and Cisco hardware that could be bought from other local sources but we will try and provide it at our buy prices plus a small handling charge plus a low shipping charge. As all this is brand new to us we will need to take it slowly to ensure we understand exactly what can go wrong and address any such issues before the volumes increase (assuming they are going to of course). While we believe that the Yagis will provide a plus to our agents marketing efforts from now on it is going to be essential to get the 'magic box' delivery schedule move up from its current "October" as, from what I can see it is a really essential element of the HSPA strategy and we have been looking for it for so long it sometimes appears it will never happen. A low price HSPA modem would 'kluge' the gap but it isn't 'elegant' and it isn't going to reach the true target price point. That being said we have still not put in place a contract to obtain the low cost HSPA modems though we are getting closer. Similarly with the selection of a business VoIP box - there are a multitude of choices but finding the right combination of features at the right price with some sort of manufacturer credibility is a very different matter. I would hate to buy the latest Cisco takeover with Cisco's only contribution being to put their label on it just so the end user is reassured that "you can never go wrong with Cisco" when the box is simply one of dozens made in Taiwan or the PRC similar to, maybe even the same as, the many we have considered from those sources. However we must make a decision on that by the end of the month to maintain hitting our plan milestones. (plans are tyrranous even when its only the 12th of the first month). The major looming consideration is the wider topic of warehousing and fulfillment which has raised its ugly head by having to store and then ship the 2,000 antennae that are about to reach their storage location mid week (we can't store them in the office as they are bulky and take up around twenty pallets. We have found a temporary solution for this single shipment of one product but it is a clear reminder that if we do progress in the plans we currently have we will need a much more sophisticated scenario which will require abilities and knowledge of which we have practically none - if not actually none. While that is some months away, if it does in fact become a problem, the months have a habit of speeding past while investigations and decisions about the future tend to get pushed aside for more pressing current time needs. Annette, of course, wants to buy a warehouse on the basis that it would be small and we wouldn't need much space and therefore it wouldn't cost much in these uncertain financial times...which is probably correct but the personnel costs of managing and operating such a facility for our small volumes (even should we become successful in this unknown venture) appear to me beyond recovery and we would have to use a fulfillment house rather than invest time and money in things of which we have no understanding....however I have learned to be cautious in assuming logic will prevail over the desire to buy real estate by some people I have known for a very long time. Doubtless various brochures and plans of commercial storage will begin to 'appear' in various locations around the house in the near future dismissed on any enquiry of what they are doing there with some version of "just seeing what the options are". I wish we could quickly find a fulfillment house in the very near fuure that charges something we can afford to pay and, to stave of acquiring more real estate for our very uncertain future needs and at uncertain future value I think we had better put a lot more effort in to that project. Saturday, July 11. 2009You Can Never Be Too Young......John Linton .....to make a major contribution to the IT/Communications industry....who can ever forget what Bill Gates did at the age of 22? We had the Exetel end of financial year cocktail party last night - nothing fancy - we booked a room at one of those nice pubs near the casino and served some finger food with an open bar and selected some very good wine with no restrictions on the mixed drinks people could order. We ordered a bus to pick everyone up from the office at 5.30pm and had last drinks at 8.30 pm - so it wasn't either elaborate or long but enough, for those with that inclination, to move well past 'sobriety' and for those not inclined to do that to have a chat with whoever they wished to including some people from our major suppliers whom we also invited (and to, once again, fail to work out how the 'close up' conjuror kept fooling them with his 'magic'). The only 'formality' was showing the new TV ad for the first time (in its not quite finished state) and I made a short address which was less than 5 minutes and by no means formal because I speak in the same way I write this blog - on topics uppermost in my mind at the time and without notes or "visual aids". The ad looked really good - very simple but makes the point strongly and easily and without hyperbole, condescension or annoyingly. Everybody, perhaps because of the alcohol, was very enthusiastic and our suppliers also said nice things about it so maybe it will do what we hope in rural and regional Australia. Time enough to consider that when it begins to run tomorrow week. Although I see our people every day, or perhaps because of that, it seems it's not until you see them all together in a smaller space and in a much different 'atmosphere' that you notice differences to the past. One of the obvious differences is that even with moving almost all our back office functions to Sri Lanka there are a lot more people working in Sydney than there was a year ago. The second obvious difference is that approximately 20% of our Sydney personnel are females and with their 'cocktail dresses' and other glamorous attributes make a big difference to the 'atmosphere' and one has to admit the noise volume - not that's a bad thing. The other major aspect remarked on by two of our supplier personnel was the overall extremely young age of Exetel's personnel which one of them expressed as "John, how on Earth do you cope with all these Gen Yers?" I had never noticed, except in a generally vague way, but his point was well made. Although we have no 'help desk' personnel in the North Sydney office any more our personnel are mostly in their very early 20s and I suppose this does contrast with our suppliers whose average personnel ages are early to mid 30s with far more 'senior' people making up a relatively high proportion of total staff. I have never given it any thought other than very casually. In my commercial experience, including very obviously my own situation at the start of my working life, I have never seen being very young as much of a hindrance to working in IT/Commuications where technology rapidly evolves and changes and, in many ways, the 'fearlessness' of youth is quite a significant advantage. I very much doubt that Exetel is in any way much different to all start up 'technical' companies where, by definition, the overwhelming constraints of budget and time generally mean that your recruitment is based on university graduates which then ensures, once you pass the 'start up' phases your first line managers are promoted from that hiring age group who themselves continue to manage people only a year or so younger than themselves as the recruiting basis doesn't change. All of Exetel's "management" is promoted from within the company which means, after five + years of operations it is almost completely Gen Y (with the obvious exceptions of its founders who are older than time itself). While the lack of experience is evident in almost everything a very young person says and does, that is an inevitability. The fearlessness more than makes up for that in almost all situations and the enthusiasm that 'freshness' adds to decision making is priceless in an industry like communications. If I had to put a value on what I regarded as the most desirable characteristics in a manager I would rank 'experience' nowhere and innovation and fearlessness at the top - I would not disqualify any person on 'age' or lack of experience - either old or young. So when another supplier person asked me if I thought having practically no-one in Exetel who had worked in the industry before coming to Exetel was a downside of this 'policy' I said if there was a downside I hadn't noticed it. Driving home I thought about the 'age' issue a little more and saw no reason to take any different attitude to Exetel's recruiting nor the process of only promoting from within the company - something that in the years I was with IBM I saw work without any downside for the almost ten years that I was there and have either copied unconsciously or because as I said earlier there really is no other option for a start up company. We do need to find a future CEO or COO/General Manager (perhaps both) within the not too distant future and that will pose some quite serious problems; in many different ways. It will be something Exetel's directors will need to seriously consider over the next month or so but my current view is that we woud work out the same pragmatic approach to that as we have to all our other personnel issues to date. We certainly won't be recruiting a "seasoned executive from the industry" as someone suggested to me recently - I think my dismissal was phrased along the lines of "seasoned is what I expect the Christmas turkey to be and when ever I hear the word "seasoned" I associated it with a "turkey"" - that ended the conversation quite abruptly. I suppose it's entirely possible that Exetel will go from having by far the oldest CEO in the Australian ISP 'space' to by far the youngest. Then again, yet again, I may be completely wrong. Friday, July 10. 2009Sysiphus Had It Far Too Easy In RetrospectJohn Linton Another day - another great opportunity to demonstrate unbelievable fortitude in the face of insurmountable crassness and stupidity. Unfortunately I think I ran out of fortitude sometime in late 2007 and have been faking it ever since......equally unfortunately there seems no possibility that the world's population will run out of crassness, stupidity and just sheer ridiculity so the situation becomes impossible for a sentient being with any vestige of commonsense and reasonableness to function......and I'm referring to dealing with the various vicissitudes that beset anyone foolish enough to think that they might like to offer some sort of service or product to some sort of marketplace in Australia. For some three years I have observed with growing alarm the various sources of distraction to the serious business of providing data transmission services to people who want to obtain them from Exetel. Many positive things have happened over the past few years - (number of end customers, monthly revenues, bandwidth deployed, number of personnel employed and all sorts of 'real' aspects of business life Exetel has steadily grown from a one person in the back room of a residential house in a Sydney suburb into a small company operating in two countries with all of the complexities that are the essential and inevitable components of 'modern' business life in the Antipodes in 2009). Unfortunately many totally negative things have come into existence and grown alarmingly over the same period of time. I have always understood Arthur Wellesley's dictum that you should never fight unless you are sure you can win (subsequently ascribed, wrongly, to some fictional Sun Tzu writing by the CIA) and have further understood the dictum that if you are forced to fight when the outcome is uncertain or even if defeat is inevitable then at least choose the ground on which to fight. I referenced yesterday that I was always grateful for Wellesley's contemporary, and almost as successful counterpart, who added that in such circumstances it is always essential to have a 'Plan B'. I have also kept this 'CV' in my diary for more decades than I feel comfortable remembering:
as a reminder that sometimes it takes a very long time, and the ability (lack of imagination to change, stupidity?) to recover from a huge number of setbacks before, if you are lucky, you might, just might achieve something you have always believed is worth achieving (and we probably all remember how John Wilkes Booth thought such a life should end). It shouldn't need the titanium will of Abraham Lincoln, the intuitive understanding of rapidly changing and evolving complex situations of the Duke of Wellington (on one of his better days) nor the instinctive strategic genius and mastery of Napoleon Bonaparte to deliver data services at low costs but with some level of success in Australia in the early years of the 21st century but I'm beginning to think I'd prefer to be in a forward positioned British square at around 7.30 pm on 18th June 1815 as the Old Guard emerged from the smoke less than 40 meters away than attempt to deal with the cloud cuckoo land interlocutions with the TIO that drive so many well meaning people to an early (metaphorical) grave. At least facing five elite infantry battalions of 20 year veterans of the most successful military force then yet seen in the history of the world you would understand what you were supposed to do and even if you thought there was no chance of you doing it there was some sort of half a half chance that you might live to see your home and family again.....even if it was minus some useful but not vital parts of your anatomy. Dealing with the newly employed and totally unknowledgeable 'grunts' of the TIO doesn't allow for any such faint hope - irrespective of whatever you do, or for however long you do it or however correct it is you will still feel 30 centimeters of (metaphorical) French steel ripping your rib cage apart within 60 seconds of speaking to a TIO employee. If only Bonaparte had had the massed strength of the TIO complaint help desk instead of eight battalions of the old and middle guard the British at Waterloo would have broken and run screaming for their mothers as soon as they recognised who they were up against and we'd all now be speaking French (which when I come to think of it, the employees of the TIO may well speak for all the sense their statements make to monolingual ISP employees - it certainly doesn't appear to be any form of English that I recognise). It's an impossible 'challenge' and asking an employee to deal with the TIO is the equivalent of condemning a person to the fate of that legendary King of Corinth - but with a larger boulder and a much steeper hill (and I'm sure none of us have ever seriously annoyed Zeus or killed anyone). We have tried since the first time we dealt with the TIO to find a realistic way of reducing the enormous time wasted on handling their, almost always, ludicrous scenarios. Personally, I don't think there is a solution having looked at everything sensible that has been tried and implemented. While it is not an option to just give up (and I mean it simply cannot be done - you can't give up - it isn't allowed - hence the Sysiphus simile) we must find a way(s) of ending the absolute time wasting that is caused but, far more importantly, we must protect the poor people who have to associate with this Federal madness for more than a few months as it is almost a career destroying job. So, once I finish this coffee I will wend my weary and hyper-reluctant way down Military Road to, once again, try and find a way of escaping from this pitiless blight which turns everything, and every person, it touches to dross. Never mind - there's the Exetel end of financial year cocktail party to look forward to tonight. Thursday, July 9. 2009The End Of Fact And Reality For Exetel....John Linton ........the time for half truths (why isn't that phrase "half lies"?) and prettiness and vomit inducing weasel words to replace bluntly phrased and unadorned facts is almost upon us. I had an interesting meeting yesterday with a company that is setting up in Australia to provide various communications services and was looking for 'partners' who would be able to provide access to their customer bases either via their own marketing processes or by giving this company some forms of 'direct access". The nice young American "development manager" cited this recent article: http://www.misaustralia.com/viewer.aspx?EDP://20090708000031323274§ion=news as a 'must do' reasoning for why Exetel must forsake its dinosauric ways and either change it's business directions immediately or face certain oblivion within two years. I had to admit to the charming American lady that I was unaware of that particular article (or the three others that I couldn't find in electronic versions I can reference here). I have never heard of the two authors of the referenced article and have no idea who the "experts" who are pronouncing "the death knell for companies like Exetel" but the charming lady was certain it would happen if we didn't give her company the chance of saving us from our misreading of the new directions the NBN2 would determine. As she had been in the country (on her first visit) for all of three days I decided to keep to myself my personal views that Krudd's NBN2 wont become operational in my lifetime and just decided to admire the personal attributes and persuasive charm of someone so committed to telling her story. It was a typically American 'pitch' (well constructed, well credentialed, good collateral proof material, presented with skill and panache and totally, 100% without any shadow of a doubt, insincere). However the meeting was enjoyable and I very much admired the skills displayed and the cleverness of the 'pitch'. Why do I mention this? Because it was the third time in two days that someone had told me that "you absolutely MUST redesign your web site - it must be really holding back your company's development" - or words to that effect. I'm beginning to recall the time I spent with multi-nationals so many years ago and my constant association with 'marketing pitches' and the 'glossiness' that is inevitably associated with them. It's far more up market now than when I was, inevitably, drawn into using some of that flim flammery and almost always deceptive material and methodologies, and incidentally began to develop an intense dislike for all aspects of "marketing" and the people associated with it.....which has only intensified over the years and has reached an almost unhealthy level of distaste (abhorrence?) now. This 'feeling' has also had the effect of making me intensely dislike all forms of marketing including ensuring we never used anything except 'facts' on our web site or our outside communications and never make any claims of who we are or what we offer that aren't immediately provable by even a casual enquirer.....or that's always been my view. So it is not a 'culture shock' (there is no culture associated with marketing - except perhaps haute couture given the possible cost of the Dior business suit worn by the charming American yesterday) but perhaps a 'deception shock' to find myself thinking in terms of agreeing to the 'dumbing down' and 'prettying up' of the main Exetel web site to meet the needs of different views brought to bear by creating the "Exetel Country" sub-web site and the inevitability of re-designing the main web site in the not too distant future. As I created the current version, and all previous versions, of the Exetel web site and have written every word that appears on it, it is hard to accept that my efforts and all the care I've taken has been the major reason that Exetel has developed much more slowly than it should have. So it appears that I'm going to have to admit defeat and allow the Exetel web site to be completely redesigned and at the same time consider ripping up the business plan we have just finished and replacing it with a plan to transform Exetel into a content conduit and forget about re-selling Optus and Powertel/AAPT data links because they are so 2009 and will simply not be viable by next year....or not. It's a hard call, but perhaps I have lost track of the real directions of the communications industry and my sceptical view point on Krudd's NBN2 delivery time frame is way off the money. I am a rational person, except perhaps for my views on the English Premier League and the AFL, and I really do understand that even the brightest intellects (of which I certainly make no claims for myself) gradually dull with age and either refuse to accept, or perhaps simply don't recognise changes that constantly happen as they get older. So: will Krudd's cynical politically driven cover up for the complete failure of his stupid NBN1 election promise with an even more ridiculous NBN2 really turn out a reality and really be delivered in the not too distant future? will 100 mbps to every Australian's home really be affordable? Will such bandwidth availability really instantly consign current usage of data networking by residential users to complete irrelevance? Will Optus and Powertel (and Telstra) really tell Exetel to take their pitiful business elsewhere because they no longer need it and will find a way to transfer all Exetel's "resold" customers to their own NBN2 access? Will.....but my poor tired and aging brain can't cope with so many imponderables with so many multiple branches based on what unnamed "experts" reported by two journalists I've never heard of and utilised by an American who has been in the country for three days are apparently meaning.....and, really, do we really need to spend $A60,000 - $A100,000 to make our web site work as it should? So, now it is early morning rather the end of a longish day and I don't think any of those things are going to happen and, if they ever appear to be occurring, I will gracefully acknowledge that I was wrong and hand over the running of the company to a more able, and much younger, person who hopefully will still have time to correct my errors and rescue Exetel from oblivion. Now where did I leave my zimmer frame - can never remember a damn thing these days.... PS: Rules I have lived my corporate life by (before I forget them): 1) Always be prepared to take the big risk 2) Always confuse the enemy 3) Always have a Plan B (apologies to NB who eventuallly failed to take his own sound advice) Wednesday, July 8. 2009Business VoIP - Now Very Much Main StreamJohn Linton We have had a very strong first seven days to the new financial year which has been good to see and is a tiny positive sign of things to come as the early days of any new financial year are usually 'slow'. One of the interesting indicators of our business progress for the last two years has been the rate of take up of VoIP services which has been a clear indicator of overall service take up for most of the past two years. Our current take up of VoIP has been obviously enhanced by our inclusion of 100 free VoIP calls in our 'Added Value' plans but the interesting figure I am referring to is the number of calls per user made on those plans as well as the 'independent' take up of people adding an Exetel VoIP service to other broad band plans that don't include a VoIP call allowance. For many experienced broadband users, VoIP is a non-issue - they use VoIP (as I do) without noticing they installed it on their mobile or on their home and business phones a long time ago. The days of endlessly debating VoIP "quality" issues ar VoIP "reliability" or even "what is the best VoIP handset/mobile/ATA/PBX" are dim memories - 'it just works' in the same way a PSTN/ISDN/Mobile call 'just works' and has for a long time. We have been using a VoIP PBX in Exetel's business for over three years and have recently moved to our own, in house developed, Asterisk software PBX which not only works as well as any hardware version but has far more functionality at a fraction of the cost of our 'old' Mitel system. At the moment more than 80% of our new broadband applications include VoIP capabilities (either included or ordered as an 'add on') and well over 80% of the users who order VoIP included plans use the VoIP service component each month for more than 40 calls per month. This, for us, is a significant increase that has come about over the past 9 - 12 months and the trend continues to 'steepen' each month. I doubt this trend is 'exclusive' to Exetel and I am assuming that any ISP that has a serious VoIP offering is experiencing a similar growth in VoIP usage that is heading towards 100% of broadband users using VoIP as a major 'serious' internet application. From what I can read in the US and EU communications media the trends towards VoIP are similar but not as steep as we, and we assume the rest of Australia, are experiencing. It is a sobering thought, at least for us, to realise that voice telephony is becoming the most commonly used application used by 'serious' internet subscribers and is probably going to rival email as the most commonly used application for non-gamers and non-downloaders. We have steadily upgraded the Quintum switch we installed three years ago to provide end user (and in house) VoIP services and have recently been looking at adding 'decentralised' VoIP capabilities in to at least Queensland and Victoria either via additional Quintum equipment or some other manufacturers. We have been doing this for a little over twelve months and over that time, presumably because of the GFC, prices of even very large equipment have fallen substantially. So, right now is a good time to look at buying new communications hardware as US demand has fallen dramatically and EU demand has, if anything, seemed to have fallen even more. That isn't all good news though as one of the highly innovative companies we were considering (and it is a very, very big move for us to even contemplate) is significantly suffering from the downturn in demand: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124697939752706203.html which is never a good thing for a buyer's peace of mind. We have been exploring how we could afford to acquire something like their 6300 and were edging towards a price that we could, only just, seriously consider when our main contact obviously became one of the unlucky 5% and we haven't been able to establish a new contact who is anything like as accommodating. While a Tellabs 6300 sized system isn't, by any means, necessary for what we want to do regarding business user VoIP over the coming 12 months it is something that we would think would be necessary by December of next year and, based on our Quintum experience (which while painless required a lot of new knowledge to be acquired), we would be wise to take a slow general implementation path into what is near enough carrier grade switching equipment that, in many ways, is as sophisticated as anything in that markket space. So we will probably have to let that oportunity go as I doubt we will find another such accommodating contact when things settle down at Tellabs and it looks like they have more than enough issues to deal with to concern themselves with tiny opportunities on the other side of the universe ("Wow, I was thinking of coming to visit but it takes 20 hours flying time to get to you guys!"). However it still means we have to consider what 'engine(s)' we will use to continue to grow the capacities to handle much greater VoIP traffic than we do today and just how to implement a sensible design that will allow a ramp up growth path which we can initially afford and also avoid reaching a point where we will have to throw away whatever we buy to get through that period when we reach the transition point between equipment classes. While I haven't taken the time to explore this in detail over the past twelve months it is now more urgent having 'lost' all the work I've done to date. We are making sensible progress in building a 'corporate' sales and engineering team and have well over 500 larger corporate customers now. Our aim over the current financial year is to grow our monthly 'uptake' of new corporate customers by over 400% by the end of June next year and sometime between now and then we would need to have put in place a much more sophisticated business VoIP solution than we have today - even though I have yet to see an Australian corporate VoIP user that has anything close to what Exetel itself uses. So based on today's news 'snippet' - one of our major 'problems' for this new financial year just got a little more problematical. Tuesday, July 7. 2009I've Heard Of Passive Smoking Endangering Your Health....John Linton .....but I'm beginning to think that passive insanity can be just as injurious. It's either the absorption of insanity by association with deluded people (even if only via email) or I actually am losing my mind due to the ravages of time, imbibing too many distilleries of single malt and too many rivers of fine wine. Having said that, I'm pretty sure that it must be my problem that I find myself failing to comprehend what is happening in the world of Australian residential communications - I also think that my failing mind and body and the realisation that life isn't infinitely long after all contributes to my general incomprehension of the silliness (I would use stupidity but the people concerned mostly don't appear to be stupid) that seems to be increasing rather than decreasing in interpersonal/person/supplier relations over the past whatever period it actually is. I knew that the simple fix is for me not to continue to make myself aware of the various completely inconsequential and total time wasting situations that Exetel, and from first hand experience and second hand narration several other service providers I have some knowledge of or knowledge of people within, are continually confronted by and with. I know it is entirely my fault for putting myself in the position of coming into contact with some of the crazier scenarios that are apparently now part and parcel of commercial life (all I need to do is change my email address and use the 'junk' button on more email addresses as well as taking myself off various 'complaint' email addresses at Exetel). However, up to now, I have felt it to be important to be aware of as many of the deficiencies that customers/prospective customers see in the company I was a part of founding. I have considered whether it has been the enormous pressures of the last financial year just ended and the subsequent relaxation of the inward restraints I've had in place to get through twelve very tough months that has resulted in these views and have to say that would be a contributing factor. However as I'm not prepared to go through another year like FY2008 I'm also not prepared to waste any more time with people who clearly have such a different interpretation of basic facts and logic than I do that one or other of us (possibly both of course which makes it even more pointless) are so totally off their heads - it doesn't matter whether it's them or me - there is zero point in any communication between 'people' one of whom may as well be talking Martian and the other Jupitian for all they can understand of each other. Before making any decision I spent almost an hour last night reading through the correspondence in my "Twilight Zone" file (where before entering you have to, as Rod Serling once wisely advised, suspend belief in the normal and rational) in which I had saved the correspondence I had with various strange people since January 1st of the current year. I thought I was in a relatively rational frame of mind and quite relaxed when I opened the file but it took less than a few minutes for me to begin to remember the interchanges as I re-read the file and could again feel my anger and blood pressure rising. After almost an hour I couldn't believe that anyone but a saint (who would need to have been blind and deaf and preferably dumb to have actually carried out those 17 different 'interlocutions' without seriously doubting their own sanity. I went to bed with my mind spinning. Last night's 'review, and now having slept on it over night and feeling rested physically and well balanced mentally (as as far as anyone can ever tell about themselves), I have made the decision that from today forward I will not involve myself in any way with becoming aware of the insane wastes of time that so many communications sent to Exetel are and simply let the people with the direct line responsibilities deal with them....they do an infinitely better job than they do if I comment or, God forbid, actually involve myself in some of the weirder 'disputes'. I did this because I'm having enough trouble retaining my sanity dealing with apparently real issues and I think if I keep reading some of the nonsense I've seen lately I will lose touch with the residual slim grip I have on reality as it is. Hopefully, Exetel is now large enough for 'my absence' from the detailed problem solving for the 0.025% (I actually think it's less than that) of our residential customer base that, as best as we can estimate, takes up 85% of our 'problem resolution' resources every day of every year for that not to be a problem. I am fairly certain that I have enough direct experience to understand how this should be handled generically without having to go through the agony of being directly involved in one more specific issue. I've never held a view that a "CEO" is beyond dealing with even the smallest problem detail with the organisation for which he/she is responsible but I am now too old to waste any of the limited number of days I might have left on this planet involving myself with people who, in my opinion, have more than one screw loose and have definitely misplaced the plastic thingy a long time ago.(and yes, I aware that I am an ultra-combative personality with an intense belief in how ethically Exetel is run). So, before writing this, I deleted my "Twilight Zone file" and also deleted my bcc accesses to four of the major sources of incredulity that deliver the more "off the wall" communications and I expect that will reduce the number of times a day I struggle to believe what can be put into writing in a commercial relationship and therefore reduce to close to zero the times I wonder whether I am losing my mind. Irrespective of what I may have learned from my dealing with the various issues over the past five years, and I assume I must have once held a different view to the one I hold today, reading such communications now serves absolutely no useful purpose for anyone at all. If I'm going to write hundreds/thousands of words each month to people who haven't got a clue what I'm saying and waste many other people's time ascertaining what on Earth has gone on, it would be infinitely better to address those words and all that 'research' to something that has slightly more than a snowball's chance in Hell of achieving something positive. Maybe life will now become much pleasanter? Monday, July 6. 2009For Goodness Sake, Would Some Federal Government......John Linton ........make up its mind about what the position of control of the Australian communications industry should look like sometime soon. Not a lot of issues seem to disturb the communications business in Australia. This is mainly because for virtually the whole of our existence telecommunications has been either 100% controlled by a government monopoly or 95% controlled by a recently ex-government monopoly in the hands of private carpet bagging financial rapers and looters. So the seasons come and the seasons go and nothing changes in terms of new services or new initiatives or more realistic pricing and absolutely nothing changes in terms of being able to do anything new with communications other than glacially slowly. Over breakfast yesterday (I got up very late) I watched the ABC Insiders program which is briefly and badly summarised here: http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2009/07/05/2617119.htm?section=business though the full video is now available and will fill in the many of the gaps in the article. It really doesn't matter that the individual concerned hasn't got a clue about the topic he raises it is sufficient that the topic is raised at all in this continuation of the era of political crucifixion of the Australian communications infrastructure. It doesn't matter one iota what densely populated countries like Japan or Korea do and it is even less relevant what a city/state like Singapore, which has a land mass smaller than Wollongong, does. In case it escapes anyone who watches the video let me underline for you that the issue is not what they may or may not achieve in terms of FTTH but the fact that in those countries it is GOVERNMENTS that make it happen. Perhaps they do it inefficiently and slowly but they actually do do it and they do it in the context of the well being of all of their people and against a long term and relatively thought out scenario that DOESN'T rely on a rip off financial return for the few drones paid for by the many. Communications is, at least in the 21st century, not something that can be developed by "private enterprise" in countries like Japan, Korea, Singapore or even the countries of the EU. For a country the size and population distribution to begin to go down that road is just plain stupid - witness the raping and looting of Australian residential and business communications users by Telstra for the past ten years if you believe otherwise. A 'private' communications infrastructure makes as much sense as a 'private' police force or a 'private' road system. OK, the nonsense announcement by Krudd (to cover up his previous election promise nonsense of building an NBN for $A5 billion) that Labor will now spend tens of billions trying to build an NBN2 is simply that - the barefaced lying stupidity of a bare faced lying opportunist who has very little knowledge of constructing anything more complicated than an IKEA 'entertainment centre' and the thought of them trying to plan an NBN2 is just plain risible. But the thought of leaving the future development of Australia's nation wide communications network to Telstra, or any other 'private enterprise' structure, is just simply insane. If anything is 'proven' by the various government or non-government communications infrastructure builds around the developed world over the past two decades it is that only a government has succeeded in providing a real infrastructure and the methodology to allow services to be delivered over it in a way that is vaguely beneficial and at a reasonable cost to the residential and business end user. This also demonstrates why the most efficient and competitive private enterprise communications systems in the world (those in the USA) aren't within light years of the government 'mandated' networks in other countries in terms of either function or cost effectiveness. Now I have absolutely NO doubt that a Labor, or a Coalition, government in Australia will screw up the building of anything as complicated as an Australia wide network (the overt pork barreling of their recently announced 'initiatives' is so sadly predictable it's almost ludicrous and confirms that anyone's worst fears of a 'government' directed network will be far from perfect and will cost far more than it should) but the alternative simply isn't worth considering for a nanosecond. So the message, in the event that there is one, from the "national communications infrastructures" being built by Japan, Korea, Singapore et alia is that they will be built at decent technological levels and will be built to serve the overwhelming majority of those countries citizens and that multiple retail vendors will provide some reasonable level of competition thus ensuring new services will continually to be introduced as quickly as possible and also prices will, by definition, remain as low as real competition always brings. How any country 'constructs' the retail sellers of the government owned infrastructure will vary by country and will undoubtedly in Australia almost certainly (but not absolutely certainly) include Telstra. There is a lot to be said for Telstra being precluded from accessing the new (incredibly expensive) NBN2 that may eventually be built by Krudd or his successor(s). Personally I doubt that any NBN will deliver services for the best part of a decade and over that time I would prefer to see the rapacious Telstra do everything in its power to actually deliver cost effective services over its current networks partly to ensure that Krudd's desires to keep winning elections using the billions of pork barrel funds is at least somewhat limited by some sort of eventual cost analysis benchmark. Even if Telstra becomes a reseller of the proposed NBN2 it's very difficult to see how they would take it seriously given that they would still have the old monopoly on a perfectly usable national infrastructure that long before the NBN2 could be built it could upgrade and reduce the costs on to a point that an end user would think twice before moving to the Krudd memorial. Having said that the privatised Telstra has, at least to date, never shown the slightest inkling of an intention to deliver any service at a realistic price to the end user so to expect them to do so now may well be pie in the sky. ....come to think of it.....and considering that Telstra and Krudd are the main people involved - the whole scenario becomes so surreal it is never going to happen - at least not in my life time. PS: Someone tell Whine that the "inflation genie" found its way back to the bottle some time ago - actually it never "escaped". Sunday, July 5. 2009Only A Satisfying Career Or Alcohol Abuse.....John Linton ........appears to prevent 'food poisoning' and 'gastric attacks' .....and 'flu'. One of those rare Sydney winter mornnigs when it's dazzlingly bright with completely cloudless light blue skies but so cold you don't want to get out of bed - so I didn't for a while. Perhaps its increasing old age and ever degenerating unfitness but sometimes it seems the nicest thing to do. There must be some point in everyone's life when the disciplines of long practice must finally give way to the body and mind's desires not to start working as they have been trained by decades of custom to do - I think I'm getting to that time of life......which under Labor's new workplace reforms (which I skimmed over a cup of coffee earlier) may make it easier for me to blackmail my boss into providing an incredible array of accommodations to me. Then again - long experience has taught me that my boss is the last person in the world to try and blackmail on anything. Periodically my mind turns to that constant reminder of the problem of having a 'job' rather than a 'career' - the "I'm so sick I won't be in today" emails (few people risk a phone call on these lies these days). Exetel has been luckier than most companies with the people we hire in that the majority of our people seldom if ever get "sick" and in the areas in which they buy their takeaway the establishments they buy from are run hygenically enough to prevent the constant "food poisoning" that afflicts some people so regularly requiring them to spend so many Mondays and Fridays "close to a bathroom". It's one of the most annoying situations in Australian business life and one inculcated in to so many people's habits presumably because of the indoctrination they receive from their 'cultural', educational and home backgrounds. Whenever I read one of those "I've got food poisoning" emails I feel mildly embarrassed for the person who thinks they can get away with lying so transparently and so unimaginatively but I also understand that sadness of having a job that does not fully occupy your working day and that you think so little of it, your work colleagues who will have to do your work as well as their own and your employer, that you can just not turn up to do it. The 'defence' of this is that "everybody gets sick occasionally" to which my reply is invariably - that simply isn't true. I doubt that anyone can remember their mother ever being sick (by that I mean staying in bed feeling sorry for themselves instead of getting their children's breakfast and seeing them off to school) and in the 30+ years I've known Annette I can remember one half day of crippling flu she had trouble with. So mothers are apparently immune to 'one day food poisoning' etc. I think I may have had half a day away from 'work' because of the same thing that crippled Annette over all the time I can remember but I put that down to too much alcohol in my bloodstream and digestive system that simply overwhelms any bug foolish enough to turn up there. Then there's......but it is pointless to go on......the reality is that people on whom other people depend just don't get sick for one day on eight occasions a year and people who have jobs that they aren't that enthused about don't get sick either - they just take advantage of left wing union induced additional "award" holidays. This pernicious and unacceptable 'practice' isn't going to go away in Australia and as far as I have seen all commercial companies simply budget for the 'don't care' attitudes of whatever percentage of employees they believe will indulge themselves in this deceit by over hiring or living with the problem and the inconveniences it causes. Obviously production line type employment and many others (including call centres) have to over hire or they would grind to a halt in Australia. I have always thought that it is inherently unfair that dedicated employees who don't malinger are disadvantaged by deceitful employees who do. It offends my ingrained sense of right and wrong or whatever. Apart from that it increases the costs of the services and therefore endangers the viability of the company. However the most serious issue is that it really annoys the people who aren't so dishonest and do make light of any slight inconvenience that may afflict them from time to time. This situation was uppermost in my mind this morning because I was reviewing the last minute changes we were making to the Sri Lankan company's business plan where 'not turning up for work' is, I am assured, a part of Sri Lanka culture. Having been appraised of this I agreed to hiring additional personnel to prevent the call centre queue times being negatively affected as they had been on some occasions recently. It was surprising what that change resulted in over a full financial year in terms of the bottom line cost of running that operation. As we pay 2 - 3 times more for each job type in Colombo than other similar employers it also surprised me that the people there would behave so casually towards their 'good fortune' in finding a job that pays so much better than they would normally be able to find - but, as in Australia, I understand what "culture" can produce in terms of changing views about your employer's money and your own money - and I doubt that such attitudes are confined to Australia and Sri Lanka. Until I looked at the changes necessitated by 'allowing for' this 'cultural' characteristic actually made it had never been quite as clear to me what a financial negative such 'cultural characteristics' result in. In the past I have discussed this subject with various business acquaintances whom all, pretty much, have taken the view that 'absenteeism' is a given for non-professional personnel and there's nothing that can be done. The consensus was that non-professional employee absenteeism should be treated like payroll tax - add 6% or so to your monthly salary bill to take account of it rather than worrying about the rights and wrongs of State encouraged theft. Sensible enough approach and apart from improving personnel hiring processes there's nothing much more that can be done in the opinion of everybody I have ever talked to on the subject. Fortunately Exetel in Australia has little problem of this 'cultural' sort - we do have some but it is confined to half a dozen totally predictable people and is dealt with quite simply (we deduct 1% per 'sickie day' - as opposed to 'sick' day - taken from their next salary increase). Exetel in Sri Lanka is too new for our 'standard' way of dealing with this problem to work in the short term but, hopefully, it will work over a relatively short time. Rapid career development seems to provide immunity to almost every 'one day ailment' known in Australia; almost zero cases of longweekendwithmymatesviridae, godigotpissedlastnightviridae and the ever popular shitit'stoolatetogotoworknowotropic virus. Saturday, July 4. 2009Has Your Company Had A Near Death Experience?.....John Linton ......this was a question from a survey a magazine was doing for some sort of article on "Smart Companies" which they consider, presumably, Exetel to be one. I would think that it's the norm rather than the exception for any start up company to experience more than one such event in their early years which almost always goes past "near death" and becomes commercial oblivion. Certainly Exetel experienced four such events in its first few years courtesy of our 'major' suppliers but there is no doubt about what I consider to be the most unprincipled set of actions ever perpetrated in my experience in business by one company against another - the other in this instance being us. I will never forget that terrible 14 day period in April 2005 when Exetel came within a hair's breadth of ceasing to exist. I have reproduced below how I responded to that survey question and as I wrote it all the anger and personal hatred for that total ***hole of an apology for a human being (may she rot in Hell for eternity) came flooding back. Yes, Exetel has had a near death experience and it taught me lessons I never wanted to learn. It also showed me how fantastically well a group of people can perform, day after day, at a level of pressure that would normally cause them to physically and mentally collapse within a day or two. From early February 2004 to late February 2005 we purchased the base level Telstra customer connections ('tails') not directly from Telstra Wholesale but from another company with whom we formed a relationship on the basis that by pooling our start up buying (we started in business in the same week) we could much more rapidly reach a significant volume discount that was in place at that time and mutually improve our profit margins. In exchange for this risk (on behalf of the other company) we gave them an enormous amount of direct assistance in providing our early automation code and processes as well as providing them with a complete copy of our web site and because they had no suitable arrangement with their bank we even processed their direct debits for them. We also provided almost daily consulting and advice and guidance as we had a lot of experience in providing ADSL residential services while they had none. This worked well for six months and our business grew rapidly. The other company’s business didn’t do anything like as well although they operated in multiple States while we confined ourselves to NSW. By November 2004 it was clear that they were in an increasing amount of financial trouble and they began behaving erratically and telling us that our success was stopping them making a success of their business. Several times they refused to process the orders we sent to them and increasingly made suggestions that we should sell them our business on ridiculous terms. We began to become truly concerned and approached Telstra to provide a direct relationship asap but it was a slow process with Telstra Wholesale telling us that it would take 2 – 3 months and with Christmas approaching it could take much longer. We did our best to keep our relationship intact with more and more demands coming on an almost daily basis and threats of “cutting you off to teach you a lesson” entering the conversations in late January and continued throughout February. Their statements also started to become based on their fears about our financial solvency and they demanded that we stop adding new customers and ‘sell’ them our customer base for a trivial sum of money to be paid in some distant future. Fortunately at this time in late February Telstra finally approved our application and we got a separate direct connection and provisioned all new orders direct while at the same time progressively transferring the old customers away from the indirect connection and signing them over to the new direct connection. We saw this as essential but it was expensive as each transfer cost us $25.00 and at that time we had over 13,000 customers. We believed this action had addressed the other company’s concerns about us going broke and leaving them to pay our bills but it soon became clear that they had only wanted to force us to sell them our customer base and on the evening of April 13th they began cancelling our customer’s services. We found this out over dinner that night and immediately telephoned the owner of the company we dealt with but her mobile and home telephone didn’t answer and she didn’t reply to our frantic emails. By 9 am the next morning over 1,000 customers had been disconnected and all our telephone lines were ringing off the hook. As the day progressed a further 1,500 customers were disconnected and it was clear that the remaining almost 8,000 customers still connected via the other company’s infrastructure would go the same way. It was also clear that we were likely to go out of business before the end of the month with amost 70% of our customers suddenly disconnected and therefore no cash flow from them and an enormous bill from Telstra for the early cancellation charges that we had no hope of paying. We were effectively out of business and with personal guarantees we would not be able to meet we were also personally financially ruined. I had been calling a quite senior manager at Telstra Wholesale since 10.00 pm the previous night and he came up with both a strategy to deal with the disconnected customers and also put in place additional personnel resources to make a manual reconnection system work albeit with significant time delays in getting the customers reconnected. However it was the Anzac Day long weekend and by then we had over 9,000 customers with no internet connection on a long weekend and unable to get through to us via telephone adding to their concern. We had 12 personnel at this time and they worked on the telephones from 7 am in the morning until they literally dropped from exhaustion sometime towards midnight over a 14 day period. The company's directors, literally spent 18 to 20 hours every day answering emails and posting replies and explanations on our on line forum. Over that 14 day period I personally replied to over 8,000 emails and made over 3,000 forum posts. Thanks to the initiative and dedication of Telstra Wholesale and an unbelievable amount of sustained effort by Exetel’s few personnel and the understanding and sympathy of the majority of our customers we survived that terrible two weeks – but only just. We ended up losing almost 20% of our customer base and, even at highly favourable 'forgiveness' rates from Telstra we ended up with a bill for over $500,000 in charges for the re-connection of the customers that had been terminated – it took us over 15 months to find the money to pay this huge unexpected expense during which we struggled every month to cope with paying our bills but never once failed to do that. Our new customer intake also slowed dramatically for several months due the considerable uncertainty that was cast over Exetel’s financial standing by the public statements of the other company on public fora and of course what was reported in the media and because 13,000 people went through a very, very bad experience and made their experiences widely known to their friends, associates and relatives. We took legal action against the other company but it went bankrupt before the action was completed. Friday, July 3. 2009Great Men, Even When Not Speaking About Great Ideas....John Linton ....are of more value than the combined 'yammering' of years of media 'reporting'. I attended a 'breakfast seminar' yesterday because it was in a convenient location and because I was interested in the topic but mainly because a business acquaintance had a spare/free attendance he couldn't use and it was an awful lot of money to waste. The breakfast was 'gourmet' which I think meant it was really lunch (the event was held in an up market restaurant) and there was better than usual champagne as well as tea and coffee and (fresh) juices (but no Scotch or other hard liquor as far as I could see). I was impressed by the attendees (other than me) who were beautifully attired (I doubt that anyone had on a suit that cost less than $A5,000 and several that I could see had shoes on worth another 2 or 3K) and held high positions in some of Australia's better performing commercial enterprises. Simply by walking in to the restaurant you could tell this was a very high powered group of people. The speaker was exceptionally good and spoke and illustrated his subject matter impeccably and cogently and with true humour, seamlessly and appropriately integrated, on several occasions - altogether among the best, if not the best, and easily the most polished 40 minute presentation I have ever attended in the whole of my commercial life. I now understand better than I ever have before why I have never made anything of the decades I have spent in the Australian communications and IT business but I understand it in a 'good' way and although I vaguely regret the waste of whatever small talents and abilities I might once have possessed I'm grateful to have had my thinking straightened out on what I should do with the brief time left to me. Not exactly a 'life changing experience', it's far too late in my personal life for that sort of thing, but certainly a comprehensive re-understanding of what 'business life' could be all about and some incredibly different and highly useful insights in to the use of time in the workplace generally and time beyond the work place more appropriately. A mesmerizing performance for which I thanked my benefactor (of the entrance fee) profusely before making my way to our 'over the bridge in the boondocks' office through the thinning peak hour traffic while he strolled back the short distance to his huge office suite at the top of some prime CBD office block as, appropriately and deservedly, befits his august position. One of the things I have missed, though I didn't really understand by how much until yesterday, since I left 'corporate life' all those years ago for the privileges and pleasures of trying to start up and run an Australian technology business, is the access to such events and exposure for even a small amount of time to the occasional first class mind who is able to share his accumulated knowledge so brilliantly as the urbane German who created such a deep impression on his, I would have thought, equally impressively credentialed audience (with one exception) yesterday morning. It isn't a matter of not having the time (time can always be made for anything if you really want to) but the lack of 'insider information' which includes you on the 'inner circle' lists of Australia's business cognoscenti that are included on these sorts of invitations. There is also the money (in this instance equivalent to the price of a long distance international airfare - not in economy) and the comfort you get when a multinational employer pays it on your behalf - I could never justify anyone but me paying for such an event out of my own money - certainly not Exetel. I now remember how much I benefited from (and enjoyed) listening to older, wiser, much more experienced and incredibly more intellectually able people than I could ever have hoped to have been speak on a range of useful and sometimes (as yesterday) key topics of general and specific relevancies. Prior to yesterday's seminal experience I actually didn't remember how long it had been since I was last enthralled by the sheer brilliance of a 'presenter' who was capable of totally changing your mind on something of which you had thought you had a pretty firm and comprehensive understanding. As I drove back to the office I remembered the either formal or casual meetings I had been lucky enough to be present at 'back in the old days' with Andy Grove, Toshio Ikeda, Gene Amdahl, Bob Metcalfe and Brian Josephson (among many more) all of whom came 'flooding back' to me. While I understand those names would be unknown to most people today they were among the true intellectual greats of the IT and communications industry back in days when I was more seriously involved in the true technology aspects of the business. After briefly feeling mildly sorry for myself for 'missing out' on the enormous benefits that such contacts with people with truly original minds and massive intellectual understanding bring to more mundanely equipped people like me I was jolted in to the realisation that not only did I, personally, now miss out on these contacts but all the people who worked for tiny companies like Exetel would never be exposed to such people because of the irrelevance of working for a small company instead of a large multinational. I had forgotten that every person needs to have contact with truly innovative minds in the earlier stages of their career to prevent them becoming 'weighed' down, and therefore constricted in their own 'vision' by the limiting effects of heavy work loads in demanding positions. I must find some way of making that possible in some way. It's obviously going to be far more difficult for an unknown and tiny Australian company to get access to such people but there may be some ways of doing it if we give it enough thought. Perhaps we need a 'tie up' with a giant Japanese multinational if we could find some way of interesting them in some aspect of what we might be able to do for them in Australia in exchange? If not Japanese then maybe the PRC or.......it's hard to think of any other 'important' country that might wish to get some sort of 'feet on the ground' access to some part of Australia's communication market places off hand....... ......One more thing to worry about...... "Of all the things I have lost over the years - I miss my mind the most." Thursday, July 2. 2009Is Everything OK In ISP Land?John Linton ......or is the usual incorrect reporting in the communications media quoting incorrectly over the past few days? Ignoring the comments about Telstra's usage meter apparent anomalies and that the CBA's NetBanking system is having an amazing run of ongoing problems my 'eye was caught' by two other directly quoted statements over the last day or so which, in my current semi-exhausted state, I can't be bothered to look up and I've deleted the emails that originally drew my attention to them. The first was that by iinet's CEO who seemed to be stating two facts that I found extraordinarily strange and I think it was from a post on the iinet section of Whirlpool but, as I said, having deleted the email advice I can't be sure. In the referenced post he quoted two numbers which seem extraordinary (in the context of another statement in the same post that iinet had 500,000 customers) if they were correct which were: - 'iinet take around 12,000 inbound customer calls per day" - "iinet add 5,000 new customers per month" If Exetel take 12,000 inbound customer calls each day and have a customer base of 500,000 customers then does that mean that each one of iinet's customers call iinet support an average of 7 or 8 times each year? What on Earth would they need to do that for? The other statement is even more extraordinary - if iinet get only 5,000 new customers a month and if iinet (now this is from a confidential source so I can't give a reference for it) has an annual churn away rate of 22% then they are losing customers at a rate of almost twice as fast as they are obtaining them. Based on an analysis of iinet's customer numbers over the past few years (available from the publicly avaialble data) it seems possible that customer retention is quite a problem for them with only their constant ISP acquisition disguising the fact that they always seem to lose more customers than they gain "organically" each year. Given the stated amount of advertising done by iinet each year this seems an extraordinarily low take up. Perhaps the quoted number of new acquisitions should have been "per week" and not "per month"? That would eliminate the strange inference about net customer loss. Perhaps the number of inbound calls should have been per week not per day? That would get rid of the ridiculous inference about the excessive number of calls needed to keep a simple service operational. Maybe I just don't remember the statements correctly? I didn't quite know what to make of those 'facts' stated publicly by a senior company executive who there would be no reason to doubt would know exactly what those individual figures were - but put them together and they make no sense at all....or is that in my mind-benumbed state I have made serious simple arithmetic errors or drawn totally unreasonable conclusions? The second extraordinary piece of information that was emailed to me (and this one must obviously be published on the ASX web site but I can't be bothered to look) was that a tiny ISP - EFTel - was trying to raise a little over $A1.6 million from its shareholders by offering them a 1 share for 2 owned shares for 1.95 cents (cents not dollars) to buy some DSLAMs. This struck me as quite odd for at least two reasons. The first was that $A1.6 million, even in these tough times of telco equipment supplier deep, deep fire sale discounts, won't buy you much equipment. The second was that it is really strange for a commercial company to have so little, apparent, credibility with their bank(s) and their chosen equipment suppliers that they wouldn't spring for such a trivial (relatively) amount of money either by commercial bill (from the bank) or by vendor lease (from the equipment supplier). It seems incapable of any other interpretation other than neither their bank nor their equipment vendor wishes to extend their current financial exposure to them. It will be interesting to see if the non-executive/non-family member shareholders feel the same way as their bank and equipment vendor. Of course both those above references are to Western Australian ISPs who always seem to be more than a little different to ISPs based in other Australian locations (or other countries for that matter). Though to be fair I noticed that the several floors occupied by PeopleTelecom just up the road from our new (very small) office in North Sydney are now for lease so it hasn't taken the new owners (M2) very long to decide they didn't need very many of the PeopeTelecom personnel unless they have all agreed to relocate to Melbourne? So that was three indications in a short space of time that not all was as well in ISP Land as the, claimed, lack of recessionary affects on the Australian communications industry would have indicated. I had two more indications of possible "trubble oop at t'pit" (at least in terms of ISPs even smaller than Exetel) when one of our larger suppliers approached us about taking over the ADSL2 bases of two of their customers who were unable to pay their bills and had now exhausted all alternative 'rescue' efforts. (may well be a new financial year decision by the supplier's financial people). We couldn't help them as it is something we just don't believe is in anyone's best interests to do (treat customers as some sort of 'asset' to be disposed of as some supplier decrees) though we understand that is not a universal view. I will be interested to see who 'buys' those two 'customer bases' if that is what happens and what sort of retention rate is achieved. Harking back to the iinet 'take over' of OzEmail some years ago it never seems to work out as well as even the most pessimistic view held before the event would indicate - in that case it seemed that iinet simply borrowed $A100 million and then wrote it all off as it realised it had paid for nothing. So strange happenings at five ISPs may mean something - or maybe it just means some of the facts are mis-reported and I can't correctly interpret the rest. |
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