John Linton
I spent an hour or so yesterday looking through the web based information on HSPA offerings for businesses but found practically nothing - actually nothing - making me believe that I was looking in the wrong places or I was suffering from some sort of mental aberration that refused to recognise information as relating to business. If you don't believe me try typing in "wireless broadband for business" or something like it and see what you can find. See what I mean?
So one example among many is Optus, who provide Layer 2 HSPA services to Exetel, think a business is even stupider than a residential user and start off with an offer of $A1.00 per MEGABYTE and then add to the jocularity by stating that the user must spend $A10.00 a MONTH - I would think that at that rate you'd be lucky to get ten minutes usage for $A10.00:
http://smb.optus.com.au/web/ocaportal.portal?_nfpb=true&_pageLabel=Template_wRHS&FP=/smallbusiness/internet/wireless
It actually didn't get any better as I tried to find specific plans for a business user - again, perhaps I was looking in the wrong places. However I genuinely couldn't find anything in something over 2 hours of looking that could, in any sense of the word, relate to a business user with the few references I did find simply more expensive versions of retail plans. After an hour or so it began to dawn on me that the people offering HSPA to the Australian market actually didn't consider there was such a market and all they were doing was taking a retail 'package' (either directly packaged by the carrier or just bought directly from the carrier and 'retail packaged by the re-seller) and trying to pass it off as a 'business' offering (in all its retail shop packaging garishness).....or that's what a hour or so of looking on the web seemed to produce.
Presumably all the businesses that buy wireless broadband for commercial use are content that this is the case because it doesn't seem to be any different across the 9 carriers/resellers I looked at.
So I stopped wasting my time and decided to use my own, simplistic, views to determine what a 'business' HSPA service would need to look like and I came up with this list:
1) Needed to be a 'fleet' offering in that there was no minimum spend per service but that there was a single tariff that applied to the aggregate of all services for data used in a monthly period. Alternately provide an 'included' number of gigabytes at a fixed monthly price with an 'excess' usage per gb charge....option decided by the customer.
2) One above meant that there were no prices per 1,2,3,etc gigabytes per service (no individual service plans) but a sensible per mb price applied to total monthly usage....1.5 cents per mb or a stepped set of rates depending on usage.
3) There were no emails or any other per service inclusions because the HSPA service was simply a 'tool' to access the company's intranet.
4) Because it was simply a 'tool' it had to have a fixed IP so that there was no need to modify any company's back end security systems.
5) A choice of being used in a mobile hand set (sim only) or via a computer (needing an HSPA modem); if by handset also providing the ability of using VoIP/HSPA to reduce mobile call costs.
6) An end userĀ 'portal' was required to allow the customer to order and cancel services and have access to running totals of usage by service and by 'fleet' at any time and to add and change individual user details as employees within the company changed over time. This to be customisable to some extent by the individual end user.
7) One, easy to understand monthly invoice listing the charges by service and the summed total of the usage by 'fleet' for the month...customer choice of a separate bill or an inclusion on an Exetel bill containing other services.
I'm sure that there are many other simple to implement functions that could be used and people with knowledge and intellectual skills different/superior to mine would come up with them in a flash and, should you wish to share them I would be grateful for the advice. If I was buying HSPA services for my company I would include the 7 things I listed above as essentials and if I spent more than the ten minutes it took me to compile that list I would probably come up with a fair few more.
So why isn't there such a wireless broadband business offering on any wireless broadband supplier's web site? No demand - very unlikely. There must be some other reason that is escaping me....perhaps they can't adapt their billing/fulfillment software?
If you have any ideas on what a business wireless broadband offering should include please drop me a line.