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.