John Linton's Personal Musings

John Linton

.......for over a month with only HSPA and whatever internet facilities exist in the remote areas Annette and I are magnetically drawn to while on vacation. We leave in a few hours with the only forced lack of connection to Exetel's data bases and communications systems being the 23 hour direct flight from Sydney to Heathrow. After that we will have a 14.4 mbps HSPA service (or less) wherever the current build is available.

As someone who 'works from home' for all but 4 or 5 hours per 'week day' it isn't really going to make that much difference and Annette seldom goes to the office except for the monthly management reviews and an odd meeting with a supplier or service provider so it won't matter at all to her. And from observation of other companies and our own operations this is an even faster growing trend now than a year or so ago. I guess I have become used to having 'half' our personnel in Colombo and that Steve spends much less time in Sydney than he used to as well as having two engineers permanently working from their homes in the ACT and NSW's Central Coast. Perhaps its like VoIP - it seems a big risk but over some period of time you get so used to it that it happens without you really noticing. All the fears of 'unsafe' and unreliable' communications and irresponsible employees seem to have faded away just as all the 'fears' about VoIP are now barely rememberable.

When we had a 4 week vacation last year we used T-Mobile's HSPA in some quite remote places as we spent the majority of the time in NW Scotland and an off shore island with the rest of the time in very rural areas of England. We couldn't always get a signal but using HSPA made it much easier than always having to find a hotel with broadband and sitting in the car for an extra hour tapping keys on a note book was no more demanding than driving in UK traffic. So the days of needing an office and a 'secure' VPN connection are long gone and VoIP means that the vagaries of other countries billing systems no longer make long calls back to Australia an expensive luxury - it's now unbelievably cheap. Of course working from a fixed place (like 'home') doesn't require HSPA but having a true mobile office link (that is secure) is a major plus or all sorts of positions within a commercial enterprise....besides the obvious ones of 'on the road' reps and engineers.

Perhaps it is my age group but more and more of my business acquaintances appear to work from home or away from home more than they do from their offices and some now run their Australian businesses from outside Australia with one person I don't personally know but have corresponded with running his operations mostly from his boat in the Mediterranean. A nice vision to keep in the back of one's mind. It is a very broad representation of a wide range of people choosing not to work from an office and having no barriers to doing that.

It's pretty clear that the combination of mobile voice and data and VoIP not only make it practical to work from almost anywhere in the allegedly civilised world (and much of the uncivilised world) it makes it lower cost and removes travel times and costs as well. So undoubtedly, like VoIP, the number of people working from home will continue to increase and the variety of positions that could be 'home based' will also continue to increase. I have never looked at in detail in terms of the cost savings to the employee and the employer but I might do that in the near future particularly if our growth in sales people does materialise and if Exetel's other 9 products/services continue to grow as they have in the past requiring us to look for additional floor space.

Apart from having a holiday in some of the less accessible parts of England we will spend a day or so looking at LTE in a 'live' use environment in Germany and make some sort of decision on what we might be able to do to enhance our HSPA future offerings in Australia by starting up some sort of HSPA operation in the UK. I badly need the break and I'm certain that means  many people who associate with me need a break from my presence. So I wish anyone who bothers to read my random thoughts an equally pleasant month in your lives.

John Linton

I have been really pleased with the first six months of the program to build a 'corporate' sales force within Exetel. For the first five years of our existence we had no sales people at all (our customers simply ordered from the web site) with the exception of one person who took inbound sales enquiry calls and who organised the faxing of information to a corporate data base. On one occasion we had hired an 'experienced' corporate sales person (much against my better judgment) and that predictably worked out as a complete failure. Our 'new' process has achieved significant early success and, if it continues to do that, we will ramp it up a little in October.

We have so far hired 7 recent graduates, with an 8th scheduled to commence tomorrow, and put them through a very hands on induction program that requires them to learn our services and sales processes well enough to sell one new account in their first month, two in the second, three in the third and four in the fourth to successfully complete their probationary period. To date the first 5 people have all successfully completed this learning process with the fifth completing it last Friday in only 9 weeks - a remarkable achievement for the individual concerned and a testament to the skills of her 'mentor' who was the first graduate we hired.

It was almost like the good old days for me on Friday morning (except the faces round the room were much better looking than the 'old days' as they were predominantly young and female) attending a sales meeting where every person had made their August quota and had a realistically impressive 'prospect list' and spoke so knowledgably and often enthusiastically - it reminded me that I had been away from the joys of corporate selling for a very long time. While our aim this financial year is to build the corporate sales force to around 40 people (larger than the current Australian company) we will not rush that key process as it is partly dependent on the ongoing success in achieving their ongoing targets of each person who joins the company.

It may seem odd to an 'outsider' that we select young recent graduates who, in almost a literal sense, can't spell SHDSL and have never heard of Ethernet in their studies which range across the 'humanities' with no IT or communications components but my view of what characteristics are required for sales success have always been very different from the 'average' and my long experience in a sales career has demonstrated a great deal about how to help any individual become a successful sale person. That is entirely natural as anyone who believes themselves to have been successful in building and running largish sales forces will have formed their own very different views based on their own inter-personal experiences....

...which is, always, the key element in building a successful group(s) of sales people. I doubt whether the key 'ingredients for success in selling vary very much - at least they haven't across my 40 years of having to make tough sales targets in 'giant' mainframes, mid ranges, nation wide networks, corporate PC programs and many different types of communications infrastructures. The success or otherwise in 'brand new' aspiring sales person to become successful is determined by only two factors: Their own characteristics and drive and the one on one teaching and encouragement they receive in the first year or so of their 'sales career'. This means, in theory at least, that it's possible to build a 100% successful sales force by simply hiring correctly and then ensuring the learning materials and the one on on mentoring and teach is as good as it needs to be.

Obviously, literally, millions of companies around the globe do this, some more successfully than others, and the ways, methods, processes of achieving the desired results are well known - except my direct observation of so many sales forces I have encountered shows that not to be the case at all - with few exceptions in my experiences as a 'buyer the 'account managers' and 'market development managers' who have tried to sell me something have been woeful with some notable exceptions. They also don't seem to have been with the company they are representing very long or then last very long with that company.

I am sure we will experience a full range of trials and tribulations along the way if we do proceed to build a sizable sales force - that has always been a given in any rapid building of any level of personnel. However we have thought through this process quite carefully and have improved on everything I have ever been involved in in terms of method and process so, hopefully, we will eliminate all of the more obvious development problems: success in meeting targets, earning a lot of money compared to other opportunities, keeping the product set highly competitive, ensuring promotion occurs earlier rather than later, training effectively all the time and all of the other obvious issues.

I think the induction and early training  processes we have developed are unique, at least they are in my experience, and that should ensure there is a very high chance of success in this key aspect of Exetel's development over the coming 18 months. The only way to make that happen is to ensure that everyone who joins always makes their monthly quota - if that can be done then we will achieve what we have set out to achieve.

There is no doubt that success breeds success.

John Linton

.......is it just me or has Krudd's political stunt of an 'NBN2' begun to acquire a truly dangerous set of connotations?

I read this earlier this morning which cheered me up:

http://www.itnews.com.au/News/154249,nbn-useless-without-subsea-investment.aspx#comments

because I regard the chances of Krudd even starting to build an 'NBN2' are below 50% (I don't count Tasmania - that is a State initiative with Federal funding) and the chances of an 'NBN2' actually ever delivering any services to more than a tiny fraction of the population in the non capital cities are zero. To have the concept of a NATIONAL (I think that word has a clear meaning that it stops at the nation in question's geographic boundaries) network being extended to the West Coast of the USA in terms of IP content is ludicrous.

I shouldn't waste any more words on commenting on this cheap political stunt - and that's all it is - and it has worked spectacularly well in making people forget that Krudd promised as part of his election that an NBN1 (costing 5 billion) would already be built and now he has managed to deflect the dumb electorate and the even dumber media in to talking about 8 years in to the future when he will, unless God is truly a cruel god, have long gone. All the papers submitted seem to show is the overt greed of a bunch of companies, large and small, attempting to get their snout in the trough of taxpayer's dollars that wil be frittered away on this exercise in political unscrupulousness.

When will those morons who elected Krudd and the even stupider media who write about his total non-policies as if they were real, realise that Krudd is one of God's cruel jokes - or perhaps just another version of the that old droll Dane's "Emperor's New Clothes" parable? Oh well.

The thought of having any National government controlling the internet feed into any country is a nightmare. The current 'filtering trials' being conducted by Stupid Stephen have been buried under the weight of media squawking about the 'NBN2' Trojan horse. A government that is seeking to impose, via forcing ISPs to meet some operating requirements, draws immense amounts of media words to the contrary (though it's hard to know whether that represents what the majority of Australians feel or simply the obnoxious know it alls getting easy media access. However, just how dangerous would it be for a government not to need the co-operation of anybody but themselves to decide what is allowed to be delivered to Australia.

Anyway, despite the headline of that article and the 'paper' it was quoting the whole thing is even more ludicrous than the actual, back of the proverbial bus ticket, "design/costing" of the pointless 'NBN2'. There never has been a question of there not being enough fibre available to provide whatever level of data the aggregate of all Australian demand has ever been. The only thing that the occasional idiot suggests is that it isn't provided at a low enough cost due to "lack of competition". How anyone could believe that a government owned monopoly on IP accessability would produce a lower cost simply beggars the imagination.

Ignoring, for a moment, the fact that there never will be an 'NBN2' - is this stunt pulled by Krudd to get him off the hook for breaking a ridiculous election winning promise beginning to morph into something quite unthinkable - a government owned and controlled ISP industry with all the questions of what that means (a la the PRC, Saudi etc). A government owned 'national network' that decides it will provide its own IP (something as I've pointed out above has never been mentioned by Krudd so far) and a current government that is insistent that it wants IP traffic 'filtered' seems to me to be a 1984 style nightmare for the remnants of democracy that remain in this poor country.

For the government to own, or control in any reguatory way, the national infrastructure that delivers data to Australians and that also has a 'filtering' mandate is something that outside an Orwellian hellish vision of the planet has never been contemplated outside, possibly, some of the more repressive political regimes around the world. Irrespective of controlling the international IP feeds the ability to control, either by policy or by act of parliament what is delivered over such a network is not something that can be allowed to happen.

Back to reality - the fact that there never will be an 'NBN2' - it just goes to show you that when you let a vacuous clown run the country solely based on the whims of his own ego you can get to a situation where Krudd's hubris and pathological lying becomes really dangerous.

Is Krudd in fact a latter day "Manchurian Candidate"? - his metronomic (speaking clock cadence) public delivery of everything from a eulogy to the tabling of expense account figures gives the growing impression of a zombie/robot under the control of a third party.....but which third party?

John Linton

.........in to daily use in ISP land?

I watched with interest when AAPT introduced unlimited 'off peak' plans in to their revived 'thrust' in to the residential market and their subsequent modifications/tweaks/clarifications. I also note a 'spokesperson's' statement that they were encouraged by the success of these plans and were seriously investigating expanding the use of that concept. I've also 'listened' to the 'murmers' around the various industry sources concerning the forays by TPG, iPrimus and Dodo into "huge" off peak allowances for various plans.....but as far as I can see (in the briefer and briefer time I have available) only AAPT has re-introduced the actual "unlimited" word in to actual usage.

My memory is increasingly unreliable but I thought the last of the "all you can eat" unlimited adventurism died out a couple of years ago with the bankruptcies of the last mindless people who started up companies on the smell of an oily rag that tried to use such enticements. I don't remember their names but I seem to recall they started up - they made their wild offers - they went broke. It was a passing phase that lasted for around three years in the 'early' days of ADSL and just demonstrated that tiny companies can't possibly make 'inroads' into the Australian, or I suspect any other, communications marketplace........but...

.........AAPT is a different kettle of begonias - it's a quasi-carrier with a parent that owns half of Southern Cross and a real need to either get in or get out of the Australian marketplace and has fiddle faddled around for the past few years while its parent dithers about whether to fund it or flick it. It did buy Powertel and, while I may be seen to be biased, that gave it a decent national network and a decent wholesale operation; as well as a 25% share in iinet that Powertel acquired when, together with Amcom (who also took 25%) they bailed iinet out of their last near bankruptcy experience. It also retains whats left of its billion dollar a year residential and corporate telephone and data customer base. Like Terry (at least as portrayed by Marlon Brando) AAPT "coulda been a contender" and maybe it, together with its parent, is going to try and revive previous dreams of Australian glory.

Only AAPT or Optus is really in the position to offer some form of 'unlimited' ADSL2 in off peak times - and possibly TPG/iinet/Internode may have some lesser capability. As the screws tighten on an, apparently, slowing new ADSL take up and the need to hold current levels of customers there will come a time, perhaps that time will come quite soon, when one of those companies (and it very much looks like AAPT is the first) will do something along the unlimited lines if for no other reason than it can be done at no/little cost to them and they have run out of all other ideas....at the end of the day the Australian ADSL provider market is just one long, loud chorus of "MEEEE TOOOOO".

The recent SX price cuts together with more sophisticated caching and a strengthening $A have reduced IP prices by almost 2/3 (or more for the larger buyers I would imagine) over the past few month to a point where the cost of cached/pure IP 'blend' delivered to a customer is something around $A50.00 per mbps for small companies like Exetel - compared with something around $A150 only fifteen or so months ago. This is fine for companies who own their own exchange back hauls (any company that has its own DSLAMs) as they also control the cost of that component of the gb delivery network - not so good for small companies like Exetel because we don't.

So Optus, TPG and, I assume, iinet can exploit their empty off peak exchange back hauls and their unused off peak IP capacity to play the "Unlimited" card, at least on the exchanges where they have back hauls. From what AAPT has said and done that appears to be the case already and there is no reason why the other companies can't do it though who knows how many exchanges/percentage of the market they really have where the back hauls are sufficient to do this?

There are no technical or financial reasons why several/many companies couldn't offer 'unlimited' ADSL2 download plans for some definition of off peak because it would cost practically nothing and it would not affect the overall network performance. However the actual question of whether it would actually benefit any provider by doing this? For as long as there has been an ADSL business in Australia the short answer is "no, there would be no benefit to the provider whatsoever". (re-check history of broadband in Australia for incidents where any carrier benefited from 'unlimited plans' - find none).

But.....and it is now a real "but", an awful lot has changed since the collapse of every provider who tried 'unlimited' as a way of obtaining customers in the 'past'.

But, then again....nothing has changed in terms of what provider in their right mind wants the sort of customer who wants to download 300 gb a month for "free"?...let alone a few thousand of them!

And I think that's the crucial decision. Exetel has always been very generous with its downloads per dollar - as far as I can see we have remained the best value in the Australia market since our 'day one' - so we have never been averse to catering for the 'heavier' broadband user. However we have absolutely no desire to cater to the sort of customer who would think that 'unlimited' was something they would really need....at least not as a way of attracting new customers.......

There is at least one other way (and I'm sure there are many more than one) of using 'unlimited' "off peak" plans (perhaps unlimited plans?) to benefit an ISP business but I, personally, don't think it's the way AAPT have begun to use them. For instance, I was thinking that we could 'reward' our long term customers by putting them on an unlimited plan as an extension of the pioneer bonus scheme.

John Linton

....it's, more often than one might think, because you are not 'looking at it' the right way. 

A boring, and often infuriating, aphorism but actually it is quite true - irrespective of how smart you think you are. I am no different to anyone else (and I think I've got the remains of a very good mind as well as being much more creative than 'average') in that I sometimes simply give up on some problem or solution on the basis that I know I've tried everything and nothing works only to realise that I've been insisting on trying to batter the door down with my fists instead of looking for the key. So it has been with the five plus years of failure to find a solution to the 'off peak' usage issue with too many people insisting on starting P2P downloads on the stroke of midnight. We failed to deal with that 20 minute period and had to give up on a very important marketing advantage - the pleasing symmetry of two 12 hour periods and all of the 'operational' advantages that gives to the end user.

I'm not sure how long it took, perhaps as little as 5 or 6 days to realise that there was a blindingly obvious solution that could, with a little bit of creative negotiation with a willing 'partner' allow us to reap the benefits of our five years of pain and sorrow and actually deliver the true 'Holy Grail' of network management - something our give up solution of August 1st had finally made clear to us - though not in a way that we expected........that after five years of trying we hadn't failed at all we had managed to reverse the usual bandwidth usage from 80% of usage being peak and 20% off peak to 60% of usage being off peak and only 40% peak. Only that !@#$%^&* 12midnight to 12.20 am period had defeated us to the point where we hadn't noticed what we had achieved and we gave up and changed the start of off peak to 2.00 am. Perhaps it was just the final freedom of not having to worry about how to fix that single issue that allowed the mind to look at it differently? Who knows?

There is no particular advantage of a 12/12 split between peak and off peak periods in any real sense - as long as the pricing is set correctly there is no problem in 'losing' the 2 hours of potential peak time excess usage charges.....they are not a significant amount in any event. It isn't really of any value to an end user - 60 gb can be downloaded in a ten or even an eight hour or less period for those users who download the whole 60 gb in any single month. It is mainly for the 'look' that the value of a twelve hour 'off peak' period is of value to Exetel and it is a differentiator between Exetel and the many ISPs that now do something in terms of 'off peak' allowances, and will, presumably keep doing that.

Personally, after all the years of trying, I can see only two ways of resolving the 'midnight' issue. The first way is what we have set out to do at the moment - put back the start time of 'off peak' to 2 am and use the 'dissatisfaction' that has caused to make sure the point is made that it makes absolutely no difference to anyone if they start their downloads at 2 am rather than 12 midnight and actually three am also makes absolutely no difference. After a month this should be blindingly obvious to any Exetel customer who uses the service and the graphs starkly demonstrate it is the case. If we wished to we could now 'offer' the 12 midnight to 2 am period as 'bonus' off peak for those users who wished to use it for non P2P/Torrent/Whatever use (those that wanted to use it for such downloads could retain it as 'peak'. I was happy with that possible solution until some unethical, and based on their interpretation of my words, functionally illiterate 'journalists' turned that concept into an hysterical dog's breakfast of gross misinterpretation. I saw that any attempt to do that would generate too much 'support' and 'administration' time.

So, reluctantly, we put that on hold and looked at the situation from a different perspective again and then realised that there was quite possibly a different solution that we had created the opportunity of delivering that none of our competitors could copy and that would be totally 'clean' and offer an even more attractive solution that any previous iteration we had tried to implement. It only requires finding one or more 'partners' willing to look outside the pricing 'me tooism' so entrenched in this industry and come up with a different pricing structure to take advantage of the facts that have been known for decades.

I discussed this possibility with one possible 'partner' earlier this week and have raised it by email with another one and will hopefully get some sort of positive response in the near future which will allow us to finalise a contract over the coming few weeks. If we can do that then we can almost certainly bring another true innovation to broadband downloads and pricing for the Australian marketplace....one with very real customer benefits....and very real Exetel + Partner benefits.

One more example that nothing is impossible if you stop getting frustrated at your previous failures, relax and look at any problem from a different angle.

John Linton

.....to the dreaded surveillance society and all of the doom and gloom that George Orwell predicted.

I had intended to see what impact the UK Government's copyright protection policies had on the two ISPs I have contacts with while I was in the UK but the flurry of articles that appeared overnight about the apparent toughening of the UK government stance as in this article:

http://techdirt.com/articles/20090825/1021095995.shtml

makes that redundant. When I was in the UK around this time last year the UK had just brought in the agreement with the major ISPS to send warning letters to users when authorised agents for various media companies issued them to the ISPs with the possibility that, like the legislation the Irish government was enacting, disconnection for persistent offenders could be considered. The early claims I subsequently read, and I can't remember when that was, were that by sending the letters piracy had reduced by 15% - but my memory could well be playing me tricks.

One thing that has always intrigued me about copyright theft is the brazen attitude of both the people who do it and the people who speak out on the public record about it - like the person who wrote this article. His derisive reference to "the media industry lobbyists" and "the movie and recording industries" shows his, and everyone like him, belief that "how dare they try and get the government to try and stop us stealing their property". I really just don't "get it". What sort of society do we live in where people not only think it's perfectly OK to steal property but actually think it's so 'OK' that they publicly get offended if the owners of the property approach their respective governments to actually 'police' the theft better?

"I think it's just fine for me to steal your property and how dare you attempt to stop me from doing that".

As a kid I remember that I, and many kids I knew, stole magazines and paper backs and other easily concealable articles from the local newsagent and book store. To my eternal shame I remember that on probably more than one occasion I stole money from my mother's purse. Those acts were pure theft and I was never under any misapprehension that 1) I was committing a criminal offence, 2) it was wrong to deprive people of their property and 3) there was some chance I would get caught and suffer the consequences. While I would prefer to think that I stopped doing those things because of an increasing awareness of the wrong of it - it was almost certainly the fear of 3) that eventuated in my ceasing those anti-social activities. Not so the people who, each, now steal property worth hundreds if not thousands of dollars a year and then turn round and vehemently declare, publicly, that it's completely "OK".....because there is little to no chance that they will have to face any consequences of their actions.

So now in Ireland, and if the overnight articles are to be believed, in the UK in the not too distant future, copyright theft will now be taken more seriously in terms of the law and there may be an attempt to stop people who illegally download copyright protected material using the internet. The public yellers and screamers about 'fascist music and movie industry' are unlikely to be deterred from their on going thieving by these actions - but a proportion will be: parents whose children cause the family internet to be disconnected, flat mates who cause their other flat mates to lose internet connection when assignments, left to the last minute are due, wives whose husbands cause the children to lose the ability to do their home work and a dozen more scenarios that immediately come to mind.

The brazen thieves won't be bothered - they will believe they can continue stealing by just changing their ISP...and so they can unless the third mooted stage of the process is put into place. It has been suggested that to address the 'hard core' thieves a register is kept of the telephone numbers that have had the internet disconnected for persistent copy breach and that all ISPs will be required to build into their provisioning systems the requirement to check that register before activating a new internet service. All very 'fascist' and a sad commentary on the 'surveillance society' The problem is crime is reaching such proportions in so many aspects of daily life that there is an increasing rationale for such surveillance.

I am always amused at the people who speak out on this subject vociferously claiming that it's "illegal" for a copyright infringement notice to be sent because it hasn't been proven in a "court of law" that the offence has actually taken place. What complete hypocrites these people are to, knowing that they constantly steal other people's property (they break the law) and then rant excessively when their ELECTED government seeks to put more laws in place to prevent copyright theft via the internet.

Personally I have no view on this matter other than the need for Exetel to obey all and any laws that apply to its business operations and (as in the recent AFACT campaign to find a bunny to prosecute) to protect the company from unnecessary costs of operation by being stupid. What does surprise me, and continues to surprise me to a greater extent as it continues, is the number of people who seem so ethically and morally bankrupt that they publicly condone widespread property theft so publicly.

It seems, at least to me, that the societies we now live in have regressed more than a little over the decades I have been aware of right and wrong.

John Linton

I didn't quite know what to make of the ACCC's recent 'announcement':

http://www.itnews.com.au/News/153809,telstra-local-loop-access-prices-tipped-to-rise.aspx

which seems to make no sense in one major way (The ACCC was adamant throughout El Sol's assaults that their declared pricing of ULL was exactly right and through the many Telstra challenges and law suits they maintained their position and prevailed against all argument. Now that El Sol and his ultra combative approaches are a fading national embarrassment I am surprised that the ACCC has suggested these changes which while not affecting the majority of ADSL users will certainly annoy those users who live in CBD apartments and will devastate country users - assuming the current proposals come in to effect.

I was amused by Telstra's CEO saying they were disappointed that the increases weren't even higher. You can't help but wonder whether this sudden volte face isn't somehow connected to the fact that those morons posing as a Federal government are beginning to realise that their election winning 'NBN2' really is financially non-viable and this is simply their first attempt to make ADSL progressively more expensive to make 'NBN2' marginally more appealing. Closing the gap between some future 'NBN2' price and a future ADSL price would be a double whammy because, of course, Telstra will reap the enormous cash windfalls of al other companies having to pay it much more for the services that are already in place. So maybe this is also part of the 'deal' to make Telstra more willing to 'co-operate' in Krudd's crazy RMS Titanic Mk 2.

All speculation aside, because at the end of the day it's pointless as we, and everyone else, has to deal with today's costs and problems it again highlights how the current dependence on one company's monopoly of a basic infrastructure determines pricing and eliminates competition in any sense of the word. Replacing it with a government owned monopoly is simply an Alice in Wonderland, back to the future insanity. What is improved by replacing the rapacity of a privately owned monopoly with the slothful inefficiency of a publicly owned monopoly? Perhaps someone can think of an example any where and any time in human history but nothing comes to mind for me.

I suppose it is a benefit to HSPA in that as VoIP gradually becomes seen as a true replacement for a wire line telephone service the possible increased cost of a telephone line will be seen as an even bigger waste of money that it is seen now. If more people looked at the around $30.00 'dead money' they pay for the privilege of having a telephone line (especially when they need it for a 'naked' ADSL service) the cost advantages of HSPA begin to become more compelling.

The cost of HSPA data is the major negative in promoting HSPA services as a true replacement for ADSL to the low end part of the ADSL user base (speed is not really an issue for this marketplace sector) and if more current users could see that paying for a telephone line is 'dead money' it would solve that negative. The argument that "what happens in an emergency when the internet is 'down' is as stupid as it always was - use your mobile. So with a saving of $30.00 on the line rental plus whatever saving there is on 10 cent calls versus the tariffs charged by the wire line suppliers, HSPA gets a huge financial boost in the cost comparison.

Unfortunately Exetel hasn't found it's 'magic box' that will allow an end user to cancel their phone line rental when they activate their HSPA service but we have at least found a box that will do what is required (Sim socket, sockets and software for two analogue telephone hand sets, wireless networking) we just have to get the price down to a level where we can either afford to lease it over two years or low enough for an end user to see the advantage of buying it. I think that end user price needs to be around $195.00 (inc sim, shipping etc) and we are a long way away from it at the moment - but at least one of our sources says that it may be possible "in the near future".

Before Christmas we HAVE to have the 'magic box' in place and deliverable at that sub $A200.00 level and we can then, finally, do what we planned to do almost twelve months ago:

- One off set up cost for HSPA including delivery, sim, wireless router and two ATAs - $195.00

- Full VoIP capability with 100 free calls

- Full Fax capability with 30 free faxes per month

- Full 'PC' SMS capability with 30 free SMS per month (then 5 cents per SM - 5 gigabytes of downloaded data 

- Monthly charge $40.00 per month

In the mean time the ACCC's proposals on ULL future pricing can't do any harm in making more people realise that a PSTN line in the 21st century is one of technology's great anachronisms.

John Linton

I did some preparation for the 'work component' of our upcoming vacation that starts next week over the weekend by analysing, in my sloppy way, the statistics I have been slowly accumulating on the HSPA results we have achieved and what I can see in the Australian marketplace. Our results, to date, are barely modest and I have been concerned at our inability to make any solid progress in either of the markets we have aimed at. Part of that is that it is very difficult to differentiate a service offering (despite the kind words of Ovum) in the HSPA market with the carriers and their resellers and their wholesalers all cramped into the straitjacket set by 3/Vodafone of thinking the 'sweet spot' is a 5 gb offering at $A40.00 and therefore you find every supplier offering that 'product' - usually with a 'free' modem on a 24 month contract......Telstra being the exception and charging more.

I cannot work out why such things happen (the mindless 'me tooism') of the Australian communications market place - surely it must be possible for twenty separate companies to offer HSPA services that differ from each other rather than simply copying one provider? If you think I'm exaggerating check the various offers being made by the various carriers and their resellers. In any event I double checked the current status and found that nothing had changed. I suppose the reason is that the carriers are rooted in the mobile sales mode and are trying to apply the same concepts to data while I have never been able to grasp the mobile marketing strategies. To Exetel, a 5 gb plan for $40.00, if used up to the full 5 gb, would COST Exetel a minimum of $A60.00 a month and more likely $A100.00 and that's BEFORE giving away the cost of the modem, sim and shipping which is a minimum of another $A120.00 once only up front. Forget about the costs of support and the other operational costs.

So I shook my head, yet again, and got a cup of coffee while I scanned the WSJ and found this article that, while not related to HSPA, had some interesting views:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204683204574357332713730174.html#mod=article-outset-box

I have always understood that setting up a new company or introducing a new service or product will not be profitable in the initial stages and that any tiny company such as Exetel enters in to any new venture or product/service delivery with great caution and the ability to fund many more loss months than are comfortable financially. I found the article interest for two reasons - the first being the three points about why TV effectively destroyed radio - but I found the most interesting 'insight' in the article as this:

"The truth is that network TV was neither intrinsically better nor worse than network ­radio. It was simply different—in a way that ordinary Americans preferred."

We have the plans in place to 'promote' the HSPA service between now and Christmas and we won't change those to any great extent but one of the things we obviously need to do is to find the 'difference' between wire line and wireless data that will make it "preferred" rather than just a loss making 'novelty' in terms of being a pure data product - not a mobile voice hand set add on. Right now I can't see anything that will make that happen but clearly we must make quite significant changes to have any chance of achieving our objectives.

So the objective is to find a different HSPA 'configuration' that is going to be "preferred" by some marketplace (or hopefully more than one) to any other technology or any other provider. Given the general ovine nature of carrier marketing personnel and the extreme strictures imposed on tiny companies because of their size this is obviously not something that is going to be easy to do - if it was it would have been done by now. However the very fact that there is so little room to move in the current pricing we are able to obtain means we will need to come up with a completely different approach. If the competition continue to simply 'me too' each other that will provide us with an opportunity to actually do something that will have a few months 'window' before it gets copied (assuming it becomes successful).

Maybe a long break in a different environment with some inputs from people selling HSPA in a much larger market will produce a result that an over tired mind over stretched by far too many minute by minute demands has been unable to do to date.

John Linton

.....is to free us of a falsely imagined past. The less we know of how ideas actually took root and grew, the more apt we are to accept them unquestioningly, as inevitable features of the world in which we move." (Robert H Bork)

I was reminded of how much I owe to my 'high school' teachers who in the mid 20th century took the trouble to educate me in ways that can only be dreamed of in this day and age. It was written on the black board when I arrived in the head of the History Department's classroom for my first history lesson in my first term at my secondary school. I have never forgotten either it or the following five years of some of the most enjoyable and beneficial learning experiences of my life. (though I had to check the exact quotation before using it here).

Of course, there are many quotations and aphorisms that make the same or very similar points - it's just that I remembered, pretty much exactly, this one and the subsequent learning experiences in not only 'learning' history but understanding why examining the past and dismissing any single view, no matter how respected, qualified and learned, as anything but ONE view and unlikely to be comprehensive, let alone correct, fully informed or unbiased. It was also in those halcyon days that I learned that the last 'Statesman' died sometime in the mid 19th century and that I was also taught the more civilised version of:

Q: How do you know when a politician is lying? A: His lips move.

As a sensible person responsible for some parts of running a small business in a challenging operational environment I take quite some trouble to 'listen' to as many views as possible on all sorts of subects directly and indirectly related to Exetel's business and even more subjects that aren't related to Exetel's current business but by some stretch of the imagination may become related at some point in the future. It becomes obvious when you take a little bit of trouble to do this that almost everything you read or hear written or said by "Australian Communications Experts" or by "Senior Company Management" is either completely wrong based on ignorance or by design. The sad thing is that the incorrect statements are continuingly made based on the writer/speaker's knowledge that he/she is not actually expected to tell the truth or even get his/her facts correct because most of his/her audience expect them to lie and distort the truth.

It is quite sad for someone who considered themselves to have a reasonable mind and a passable intellect to come to this view bearing in mind my "careers master" making the dismissive comment in my one and only career planning session that "commerce is only for people with third class minds who also lack any semblance of ethics" - or words to that effect - it was a long time ago. Unfortunately I have only ever worked in 'commerce' for the whole of my woking life.

My reason for mentioning these two points in conjunction is that thee are a lot of current "givens" in telecommunications in Australia at the moment that are going to have to change over the next two or three years and will then be seen as never really being 'given' at all. What will become most important to understand over the coming 9 - 18 months is how the totally communications knowledge bereft Krudd and the totally truth averse Telstra screw each other into the ground over the doomed to total failure 'NBN2' and what opportunities this ludicrous clash of stupidity, arrogance, unscrupulousness and corruption brings about.

When we started the Exetel business we had the desire to create a very different type of company - we wanted to offer a 'suite' of services that would be at the lowest cost available in Australia and were delivered at levels of speed and reliability that were as good as or better than those provided by any other company. These were pretty silly objectives for a start up company but we believed them to be achievable over some period of time that we thought would be something less than three years. We didn't achieve those objectives within three years but after five years we are getting very close. The main thing standing in the way of achieving them completely is Telstra (yes I realise how naive that sounds but despite being told a long time ago to "always be prepared for unpredictable change") I'm not sure anyone could have been prepared for a Sol Trujillo raping and looting trip to Australia.

Things have become clearer now, if only a little, and having being forced to prepare Exetel for a Telstraless future it's going to now be easier rather than harder to achieve the objectives we set out to make happen than it would have been under the 'old' Telstra monopoly. One way or another there will be a change in the Telstra monopoly and while that may eventuate as not much of a change we believe it will be enough.

One thing is that the 'given' of a monopoly telecommunications provider in Australia, for the first time, is not a certainty and the fairy story of Snow Telstra and the four dwarves may have a slightly different ending. One thing's for sure - I don't think McGaughie expected El Sol to actually turn out to be the wicked witch with such a virulently poisoned apple that it will take more than a gentle kiss from a handsome government to revive Snow Telstra.

John Linton

..........I received a fax mid-morning yesterday from Telstra Legal accusing Exetel of  using false and deceptive and misleading words on a one third size A4 flyer used by Exetel agents in around 100 country towns around NSW, QLD and VIC and, absolutely flabbergastingly, an incidental image on our web site! I have decided not to reproduce the Telstra 'letter of demand/cease and desist' because although it contained no restrictions or proscriptions that I could see I really am sick of Telstra's letters of demand regarding my personal rights of what I can and can't say/write in my capacity as a "private citizen". However, you can probably gather the gist of what was written to us from my reply:

("Telstra Legal Person"),                                                                        21st August 2009
Telstra Consumer Legal,
400 George Street,
Sydney   NSW  2000

Reference: Your (Faxed) Letter Dated 21/8/09
 

Dear Madam,
 
We have received the above referenced letter.
 
We disagree that any potential buyer of an HSPA service could, in any way, be deceived by anything that is said, or implied, on Exetel’s web site which has so many disclaimers and qualifications as to render any description of any page as being, in any way, false or misleading let alone deceptive as being ridiculous.
 
Similarly we doubt that any reader of the flyer you reference (which is only available in some 100 country towns where the HSPA service is viable) could ever be persuaded to buy an HSPA service (where coverage was not available) based on either the flyer or the sign up procedure requiring them either to get an agent to submit an order or by themselves ordering from the web site which requires both an agent and an individual to check for coverage on the order form sign up process.
 
The order acceptance process similarly checks for availability and coverage and rejects orders that do not have coverage and available capacity.
 
This is assuming that someone was stupid enough not to check in the first place.
 
Personally, I think your ‘complaints’ are frivolous to the point of stupidity – but then you work for a company that continues to display in its every action, total contempt for Australians generally and other communications companies particularly.
 
I recently spoke with “the ACCC” or, not actually being able to speak to an organization, to the General Manager of Compliance and Regulatory about your June 10 letter and your company’s attitudes generally and referenced your previous complaint.  I have little doubt that the ACCC would not regard any complaint you made as set out in either of your letters as being anything but vexatious and quite frankly I am inclined to test my view.
 
Because, as usual, your company is far too litigious and has far too much money allocated to your anti-competitive practices, tiny companies (such as Exetel) have to make the commercial decision to simply do what drones like you waste your time writing. so:

1. On the billion to one chance that some mentally deranged person would think that a pretty picture on a web site is somehow some sort of inducement to order an HSPA service where coverage is not available we will replace the image.
2. On the trillion to one chance that some hopelessly confused person believes that ‘almost anywhere’ means that they can use an HSPA service everywhere we will destroy the remaining copies of the flyer and advise the 100 or so agents to whom they were sent to destroy any stock remaining in their control.

One day, should you ever develop a conscience, I hope that you continually look back on your time doing what you are now doing and cringe with embarrassment, perhaps even self disgust, at how you wasted this period of your life.
 
 
J Linton
(for Exetel Pty Ltd) 

 Personally I would have preferred to tell the writer of that letter to go **** herself, but having been a touch condemnatory of people who let their anger get the better of their fiscal responsibility to their shareholders yesterday that would have been not quite sensible. It is just yet another example of  that might(y) (dollar) is right and if you don't have spare money you just better suck it up. 

Never mind - just one more person to add to the fantasy list of people you'd like to run into in a dark alley sometime and see how tough they are without a giant corporation's money behind them.

I sometimes wonder what it must be like to work for Telstra Wholesale and wonder whether those people know how much they are so badly regarded by their customers. I used to wonder whether it is just me that holds such a low opinion of them but based on my conversations over the past 15 years with quite a wide variety of people who have dealt with Telstra Wholesale in its various guises I get the impression that those people's views were overwhelmingly negative. I was reminded of this today (shortly after I received the letter) when I had to go into the city to do a brief presentation to one of our major suppliers business sales force on what a wholesale customer wants from its suppliers and being pathologically afraid of being late I was 20 minutes early. This allowed me to hear the last part of the presentation by the CEO of a much, much larger wholesale customer of the carriers who described Telstra Wholesale in far more scathing terms than I have ever used - I was reminded that my views are not exclusive.

However fighting with Telstra is as pointless as Michael Malone's 'crusade' - at least I have learned that it's more sensible (even though the taste in your mouth is GodAwful) to eat s*** than pay the legal bills involved in disagreeing with the supplier you pay $A1.5 million a month to for the privilege of continually being called a criminal and a moron.

John Linton

It's always good to start the day with a good laugh and Michael Malone can usually be relied on to provide one whenever he decides to grandstand to the media from his alternate reality. His latest piece of nonsense (admittedly cooked up for him by lawyers who seem to be even more off beam than usual when trying to comprehend communications technology) that was so risible is contained in this:

http://www.zdnet.com.au/news/communications/soa/iiNet-invokes-Telco-Act-in-AFACT-defence-/0,130061791,339298037,00.htm

The particular statement that amused me enough to actually cause me to laugh out loud was:

"To examine customer communications on the basis of a third party's allegations would be a criminal act for us to engage in.

Personally, and with only four months to go, I think this is a major contender for the annual "Sanctimonious Git Of The Year Award".

This is such a childishly stupid mis-direction of the actual complaint about iiNet's (who enthusiastically volunteered to be the 'stalking horse' for Telstra) behaviour that it beggars the imagination as to how someone who has completed the first year of their law degree, let alone a super expensive 'team' of high prices solicitors and a couple of specialist SCs could come up with it. It has nothing to do with ANYTHING that is being complained about and (not being remotely legally qualified) can only be being suggested as a last resort to defending the indefensible:

1) No data carrier is permitted to 'read' the traffic it carries

2) Therefore no data carrier can decide whether an allegation of copyright breach can be verified by the carrier

3) Therefore a carrier is required to do nothing when a breach of copyright is alleged

Pretty simple - the carrier is by this argument completely exonerated from any responsibility for anything carried over its network. Game to iinet/Telstra - new balls please.

Not quite....in fact not at all.

The problem with that 'defence' (as any specialist SC would well know) turns on one irrefutable fact. That fact is that the OWNER of the IP to which copyright information was downloaded is in fact, in this case, iinet (or in all cases some other ISP). So the OWNER of the IP address is, as claimed by AFACT, the entity perpetrating the copyright breach of which they have provided CLEAR EVIDENCE (title, date and time downloaded, location downloaded from, location downloaded to) and they have presented this evidence to the OWNER of the IP and have proved that the data travelled to devices OWNED by owner of the IP address.

As I am not privy, obviously, to how AFACT's SC will run his case I am obviously just stating the sort of scenario that even a simple person with a little knowledge would view the situation which is that without the carrier concerned having to examine one byte of data they have no defence to the exact data that AFACT have provided them with.

So it's a "point of law" as to whether iinet (in this case) is in fact the downloader of the copyright infringing material or not - at least that appears to be the nonsense Michael Malone is happy to say he believes and therefore why he feels iinet is 'innocent'. An interesting definition of one person's ethics if also an illustration of other aspects of one person's knowledge and overall character.

This 'argument' has ben run in both the Republic of Ireland and the UK and some other EU countries - and has failed the test of those countries legal systems in that, to greater or lesser degrees, the position is that the OWNER of the IP has the responsibility for what traffic is downloaded to and from that IP and have 'voluntarily' agreed to co-operate with government approved copyright holders to take various actions against people using those IPs for breaching copyright. In the Republic of Ireland that 'co-operation' includes removing access to an IP demonstrated to be involved in copyright breaches (the practical effect of that results in cancelling the end user's service....or does it?)

Exetel was sufficiently concerned (as a very small company with no money to fight the sort of law suit iinet volunteered to involve themselves in - between $A500,000 and over $A1 million plus - so we took expensive legal advice to understand the scenario I have briefly described in this musing. We then dealt with the AFACT allegations and communications as advised by the SC briefed by our solicitors and feel safe in following his advice that we are protected completely from both legal action against Exetel and also protecting our customers from any 'false' allegations of copyright breach without it costing us one cent and without it causing us to breach the telecommunications act or disadvantaging any of our customers.

Michael Malone's hubris and desire to grandstand to the media is so totally pointless that it is impossible to understand what could have motivated him to enter into a legal fight that is basically unwinnable on legal grounds and even in the event of finding some legal way of 'winning' brings in to question all sorts of negative views of the ethics and business practices of a commercial entity. No wonder Telstra is very happy to assist iinet in its legal defence costs - what a great way of using a cat's paw.

It could all have been made to 'go away' without one cent in costs or without disturbing any customer concerned about being falsely accused of breaching copyright (or, if you wish to be cynical, anyone who knowingly breaches copyright):

1) Forward the copyright breach notice to the end user without comment giving them 2 choices and blocking their service until they make one of the choices

A) First choice - acknowledge receipt of the breach notice and deny/remedy the contents and immediately get the service unblocked. (whether the user actually did breach coyright is irrelevant - they can still selet this option).

B) Second choice - Don't acknowledge receipt of the breach notice and the service remains blocked for 21 days and is then cancelled.

2) No cost to anyone, AFACT's demands met 100%, apart from a few seconds blocked - customer not inconvenienced in any way - Exetel not liable to any legal action.

Simple, 'elegant' and effective. You have to wonder why iinet didn't do this no cost and simple thing rather than risking a lot of money, reputation damage and a lot of wasted management time....maybe he just likes fighting as he has nothing else to do with the time or large amounts of shareholder money involved?

John Linton

According to the various reports associated with the listed communications companies annual results, particularly Telstra's, the increase in new ADSL customers has rapidly slowed over the past 6 - 12 months and is forecast to slow further over the coming 12 months. The same pattern was evidenced in Optus results and it was further indicated in iinet's recent ASX report. The ABS figures for June 30th 2009 will become available soon if they follow the timing of previous year and some sort of aggregated growth over the past twelve months will become easier to determine.

One interesting indication from the recent iinet results was the apparent zero growth, or worse, for the Westnet operation. I don't know what you make of the figures shown on slide 13 of the iinet results that you can find here:

http://www.asx.com.au/asxpdf/20090817/pdf/31k3w5j5j1v9y5.pdf

but it looks to me that 'Westnet' whose customers are, based on previous iinet public statements, almost entirely 'off net' have not increased at all (a proportion of the nett additional 5,000 customers could be iinet customers as they must sell to some new customers who aren't connected to their own DSLAMs - or at least I would have thought so). So the figures indicate that 'Westnet' probably went backwards (something that seems to have happened each time iinet takes over another ISP). I suppose when any company gets 'taken over' there will be significant upheavals which would inevitably result in some sort of 'hiatus'. If I'm reading the figures correctly the 'hiatus' was of a significant length and had a major negative effect. You can do your own arithmetic (mine is not too good) but although iinet's words put a positive slant on the numbers the total of 'off net' and 'on net' customers increased at around the same rate as Telstra's and the increase in the second six months is lower than in the first six months though not such a sharp drop as Telstra's.

Perhaps I'm reading too much in to it and the growth is stronger than what I can see in my personal reading of the various reports from Telstra, Optus and now iinet. There are no indications that I can see in the first 6 or so weeks of the new financial year that ADSL growth is slowing - in fact for the last ten days ADSL sales have suddenly increased quite markedly by over twenty percent. I can't explain that other than we introduced new plans on July 1st and again on August 1st which may well have boosted sales above the trend line (the new plans weren't aimed at doing that - just aimed at preventing new sales from dropping and reducing the churn rate) and in any event our volumes are not significant in any overall market sense. But where they are significant is that, together with HSPA sales our new customer acquisition rate (gross not net after churn away) is running at well over 50% above the rate this time last year for which I have no explanation for at all.

It will be interesting to see the TPG figures when they eventually become available but that won't be for some time by which time the year will be too far gone for them to be of any use in this fiscal year's planning fine tuning. So the only information to come in a reasonable time frame are the ABS figures in the next week or two and then its back to 'blind speculation'. I'm happy with the early results for Exetel though a few weeks is no true indication of anything real - though better to have good early figures than bad ones of course. Personally I'm hoping the growth forecast based on the ABS figures (when they are available) doesn't look too negative as it is always a strain to have too great a disparity between the growth you are planning and the 'trend line' you develop from the ABS and other reported 'actuals' - too high and you never stop worrying that you are endangering your company and too low and you worry an equal amount about losing an opportunity. 

The big unknown, at least for me, is what will happen to ADSL1 take up and also the churn away rate to our or someone else's ADSL2? Harking back to the iinet figures on slide 13 you see the need to answer that question - iinet's/Westnet's "off net" 'growth' was 5% over the whole of FY2009 with 'growth' in the period 1/1/09 to 30/6/09 falling to less than 1% -which assuming the trend line holds means net loss from now onwards. Exetel's trend is not like that and we would also expect that HSPA helps us add significantly in terms of 'ADSL1 users' who download less than 2 gb per month. However I would like more information on how ADSL1 is going to move over the remainder of this financial year. From what I see within our own user base ADSL1 customers migrate to ADSL2 pretty much as soon as the option becomes available. In our case there are only around 3% of our current ADSL customers that remain on ADSL1 where we have an ADSL2 option available. We obviously lose ADSL1 customers where other ISPs have a not too expensive ADSL2 service available where Exetel doesn't.

If anyone has any hard data they would care to share that would be very helpful. 

John Linton

I had an interesting meeting with one of our competitors yesterday who was interested in buying Exetel. I was surprised at the approach because, personally, I can't see that Exetel represents any value to any other Australian ISP. We have seldom, and not for many years now, given any indication that we are interested in selling the company. I can't see how anybody can have formed an opinion that we would be interested in selling as every action we take and every word we make public makes that position perfectly obvious. When I received the call. 'brokered by one of our suppliers', I made these points quite clearly but as the caller wished to have a '"brief - get to know you face to face" I agreed - mostly out of curiosity and in a lesser hope that I might learn something useful. (first precept of running any commercial enterprise: always collect as much information as you can because you never know when you might hear/read/see something life changing).

It was a pleasant enough meeting in most ways but I didn't learn anything very useful and I certainly have some very different views on where some key aspects of the Australian communications marketplaces are heading so there was very little, perhaps no, 'meeting of the minds'. His main point seemed to be that there was no future for any supplier that wasn't able to build a customer base of 2 million customers (he didn't manage to substantiate why that is the case). The subject of price came up and I was unable/had no desire to enter into such a discussion so instead I asked how an 'outsider' would value Exetel if it was to make a serious offer. After the usual gobbledigook about valuing the user base as they had no desire to take on the 'shell company's liabilities" he came up with a formula that they "had used in the recent past". I explained that Exetel didn't regard its customers as 'assets' and in the event we ever did sell the company it would be on the basis that the whole company was the 'asset' - as I would have a major problem in treating our customers like some sort of 'live stock'.

There was one question that I was unable to give a realistic reply to which was "under what circumstances would Exetel's share holders sell the company?" My response was that, short of serious ill health, I didn't think that Exetel would ever be for sale. We then briefly discussed how difficult it was going to be for small communications companies to 'stay alive' in the next 18 months or so before we parted company after a fairly pointless 40 minutes and went our separate ways. While I was driving home I thought about whether the next 18 or so months would see any major, and life threatening, changes in the Australian marketplace and, perhaps because I am just too tired, I decided I couldn't see anything happening that would pose any greater challenge than usually happens in any 18 month period. The vague issues that had been raised were non-events or simple things we had considered and dealt with a long time ago (Telstra aggression, 'NBN2' pressures, price difficulties as the "Pipe Cable founding buyers" came on line, ADSL stagnation).

However, it did cause me to think about whether there is any real reason for Exetel, and for that matter many other companies, to remain in the Australian communications business. I'm not given to introspection and to misquote the late and unlamented Marshall of the Nazi Luftwaffe "when I hear the word 'philosophy' I reach for my revolver" - but what is the point of Exetel, and many other companies, actually being in the Australian communications business? I know why we started Exetel and the objectives we set for ourselves. After a little over five years we haven't been able to achieve at least one of the three objectives and I sometimes wonder whether we ever will given the pressures of the other two. Similarly what are almost all the ISPs in Australia in business for? Do any of them actually do anything better than a major provider? Do they do it cheaper? Do they do it more efficiently.

Basically the answer is they all do the identical thing at slightly different prices - all of which are much higher than they need be....including Exetel. It's partly because of the way the telecommunications monopoly was deregulated so badly but even in the case of the mobile businesses they do nothing different and if the name was hidden on their ads could you really tell any of them apart?

I don't think that Exetel is ever going to have 2,000,000 customers, certainly not in my life time, and I also don't think that Exetel is even ever going to have enough customers to make any difference to pricing in Australia - except for the small percentage of people who use our services of course. So perhaps the person I met is right and Exetel will simply be unable to compete in a year or so time and all the effort put in will have been wasted.

Then again - I have never thought very much of that particular company and, harsh though it may be on only 40 or so minutes acquaintance, I think even less of it's CEO - I have little doubt the view is mutual.

You never know - we might solve the conundrum of our three conflicting objectives and in the mean time some endangered Australian flora and fauna may get some better chance of avoiding extinction....and I suppose 100,000 or so users of Exetel's current services are getting better value than they would if we didn't exist.

John Linton

....what happens when 'government' involves themselves in doing what 'private enterprise' does.....or does anyone really believe that 'government' actually does anything half decently, cost/effectively and to the benefit of anyone but a group of dim witted politicians who haven't got the slightest idea of what is involved (except it might get them re-elected?).....and this is the case despite the fact that (if they live in NSW) they have had the opportunity of seeing what a Labor government can provide in the way of 'government' run "infrastructure" such as education, health, rail, roads, ports, policing and......(add any 'government' operated service you can think of)  such as.....well, Telecom Australia before it was "privatised".

If you have forgotten that 'government' is incapable of building any infrastructure at a cost anyone can afford to pay for in a time frame in which anyone wants to use it then consider these two articles from the recent media:

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,25938987-5006788,00.html

and:

http://www.southerncrosscables.com/public/News/newsdetail.cfm?StoryID=172

They provide a stark contrast of some speculation on the cost of a 'government' provided 'NBN2' and the ongoing reductions in cost of a private enterprise major undersea cable service.

The article from the Australian is mere speculation and the numbers are very, very unlikely to be even vaguely correct (how could they be - no-one including the 'gubment' has actually done any studies to get to a base point let alone a set of realistic estimates). However they do proceed from a close estimate of the funding committed to the project and then do provide a basis for establishing a take up percentage. It doesn't matter whether their estimates are correct or not - even if you take the best case scenario you can see that the project will never become financially viable and depending on the ongoing stream of Federal Labor funding has the ability to bankrupt the Tasmanian State budget within a very short space of time.

As the Labor Federal 'gubment' (as Julia Guillard insists on calling it) has no analysis nor any sort of financial plan for the Tasmanian 'NBN2' it's impossible for anyone to actually work out what the cost of providing a fibre connection to a residence or business in Tasmania is going to be - either as a heavily subsidised "start up" service or as a financially viable on going service. The figures in the Australian can't be used as they are as 'woolly' as Krudd's non-existent figures and have no more credibility. The only thing that is known (though I don't really think "known" is the right word to use) is that Telstra postulated some figures a long time ago to the Howard Government that indicated a cost of (Metropolitan build only) at around $A7,000 per end point and I can't remember now whether that was FTTH or FTTN - but I think it was the latter as Telstra's proposal involved no 'network sharing' of course.

So, everyone will have to wait for some real costings but you can be very, VERY sure that they won't be at all pretty and you certainly wouldn't let "your grandmother" invest in Krudd's fiscal criminality. It's very doubtful that any of the real numbers will see the light of day before the next Federal Election so there's little point in considering any aspects of the 'NBN2' for quite a while.

The other, very positive, news item I cited shows what a whiff of competition (something an 'NBN2' will never have) can do to prices of internet delivery components in Australia. Does anyone expect the cost of Krudd's megalomaniacal madness to fall 86% in a six year time frame? I guess there must be some people who believe it will based on today's opinion polls where Krudd retains a Fidel Castro/"Dear Leader" type popularity rating. As SX provides all of our bandwidth to the USA West Coast this latest reduction in cost is a welcome bonus and, looking in to the future, provides small companies like Exetel with greater flexibility in lowering future service costs (something it seems impossible for an 'NBN2' to ever achieve). We were recently enabled Exetel to reduce some of our ADSL plan prices by as much as $5.00 per month and/or raise the included downloads due, mainly, to the last Southern Cross price reduction and the latest reduction would allow a further reduction in base plan costs some time mid next year. There were of course 'two prongs' driving the latest price reduction. One, despite SX claims to the contrary, because of possible new competition. The main driver though is the fact that as the base technology continues to develop the costs of providing a megabyte of trans Pacific data continues to fall with a capital investment that also continues to fall as the technology advances. What would the current mobile networks look like if they had been built by a government monopoly in 1990 and no other network would be allowed to enter the market?

I wonder whether Krudd's 'NBN2' which would be built at a cost that would almost certainly be so high it would never allow a commercial return would ever allow even more money to be invested to upgrade it as technology develops at its usual rate of doubling in capability and halving in cost every three years? I'll give 100 to 1 that you'll never see an SX type price reduction for any 'NBN2' that may get built - assuming that anyone is ever insane enough to try and do that.

John Linton

It needs some considerable amount of mental effort to take any of the advertising claims seriously and I often wonder how the people who dream up the claims and statements live with themselves in 'real life' based on what they 'say' in the various advertisements they dream up. Annette and I went to the movies yesterday afternoon and before the start there was an ad for TPG broadband which was unremarkable except that I had not seen TPG advertise at movie theatres before (that visual/audio pollution being occupied by iiNet for so many months) and that the content of the ad was so specifically mis-leading that only someone who had had their conscience surgically removed could have written it. Then, a minute or so later came a very similar ad for another ISP with almost identical claims which were identically misleading and identically 'phrased'.

......which is really sad now that Exetel is doing some advertising and it jolted me in to re-considering exactly what we were doing.

Earlier in the day I had noticed the identical misleading method used by Unwired in an ad in the weekend newspapers and I am beginning to think that there is some new virus attacking only people who work in advertising agencies or advertising departments of Australian communications companies. What I'm referring to is the "1,000,000 gb for 2.5 cents per month style ads that (in the case of the TPG ad at the movies) might have said that 40 gb of the huge HEAD LINE ALLOWANCE was in the early hours of the morning but for a casual observer I didn't get that 'message' until I checked on the TPG web site when I got home. Similarly the Unwired 3 gb for $15.00 although written took a few seconds to realise that it was 1 gb for most of the day with the other 2 gb in a similarly less than useful period.

The other thing that applied to so many similar ads, from even the largest companies, are increasingly burying the 24 month contract 'poison pill' almost always associated with these special offers deep in the ultra small print and passing it of as if it was a quite normal contract period. Perhaps it is - I didn't think that contract periods over 12 months (and that's pushing it) were in any residential customer's interests in any way at all. So the combining of a highly restricted "off peak" allowance with a smaller or similar "peak" allowance is now 'normal' as is a 24 month contract for at least three of the less salubrious comms services advertisers.

I am wondering why they would be doing this? It isn't as if no-one (including the prospective buyers) aren't going to notice when they get around to going to the various web sites to order these 'bargain priced' services is it? Are people so dumb and blase about lying advertising that they just say to themselves - "oh well - knew it was too good to be true - but I'll buy it anyway"? It's the only conclusion I can come to. So, as I always thought, advertising is the exclusive preserve of the unscrupulous preying on the stupid and vulnerable - not something anyone with even a basic understanding and belief in reasonableness in dealings with others would ever stoop to.

So does that mean that if you run your life along ethical and reasonable lines you can't use advertising because, virtually without exception, communications advertising is just plain lies for the most part and because it has gone on for so long it is obvious that the ads are written and designed by people who lie as a matter of course and have got away with lying by using every syllable on a standard key board to withdraw the most obvious meaning of all the statements made in the ad they write? If you took the trouble, as I did yesterday evening, to go to the web sites of the sleazier ISPs you will not find a single 'offer' that doesn't have at least 3 'qualifiers' attached to the main aspects of the 'offer'. My record was a major carrier's page where there were 14!!....and, after over five minutes of studying the text of the offer, I actually couldn't understand what it was I had to commit to to buy the single service I was interested in.

Is it time for the relevant authority (ACEMA?) to ban the sale of keyboards to marketing and advertising personnel that have any thing but letters and numerals on them? Could any of those people actually write an advertisement without the use of asterisks, number signs, tildas etc?

You know what? - I bet they couldn't.

Which leads any logical observer to the inescapable conclusion that the vast majority of communications advertising is designed to mislead the reader of the "head line" statements - what sort of people run companies that take for granted that they will use advertising that has the principal aim of misleading possible buyers in to false impressions about the capabilities of what they are buying?

What other explanation can there be?