Sunday, November 15. 2009HSPA For Business (2)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: 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 user '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. Saturday, November 14. 2009"Smaller" Suppliers Actually Have Some Very Real AdvantagesJohn Linton I took some time 'off' yesterday afternoon to consider what options we may have to increase the appeal of our HSPA services which we regard as an important future contributor to Exetel's viability in the future and that future that is closer than it was two years ago - if you'll excuse a Sybil Fawlty type expression. As with everything we have tried to do with HSPA since we embarked on the program more than three years ago everything we have tried to accomplish has taken much too long to put in place and much of what we originally set out to do is still in limbo. Perhaps I should take that as a sign that it's all too hard for a company of Exetel's size (so Mike, is that a better way of phrasing it?) to do and we should go back to simply re-selling some other entity's HSPA service - it would save a lot of time and constant disappointment? But, being the incredibly stubborn/stupid person that I am, I really don't see any point in doing that at all which, in turn, would mean that we really must find a sensible solution in the immediate future and stop 'messing about' round the edges. Recently we made our 'largest' sale to date with a new business customer buying almost 100 of our most popular HSPA plans (and modems) for their reps to reduce the delays in placing orders while on the road - doing it 'on the spot' instead of when they next found a wifi service. It is an obvious application and one that my eldest daughter has been using for almost two years for her sales force and I am aware of several other sales forces using HSPA for their 'on the road' reps so it is likely to be widespread application type for all the 'bleedingly obvious' reasons. Why they didn't buy from someone else (bigger/more reliable/well known/etc) came down to the simple provision in the Exetel service of a static IP which apparently saved a lot of 'security' requirements without the need to write additional security into the application. That and our very low, 'real', prices. So I took the time away from the office to go and see a company we had bid our HSPA services to almost a year ago for the same sort of application and lost the business to another provider because of "coverage/speed/big company support/etc" - all the things I would have actually agreed with at the time....and actually wrote to him saying I did. He was kind enough to contact me earlier in the week wanting to have a chat because, in his exact words - "well, in a nutshell, it hasn't turned out as we were hoping and we have abandoned the project". When we had a cup of coffee yesterday afternoon (his PA makes the very best coffee I have had in a very long time) he had a sad story to tell that basically was the exercise had ended up costing "ten times" (his exact words) what was budgeted for data and "twenty times" what had been budgeted for voice calls and the VPN problems were endless and weren't solved at the time they called a halt. He also said that the application implementation costs were now out somewhere past Alpha Centauri and his final comment was - "and then there's the billing nightmares and disputes we estimate we may eventually solve sometime next century". So, in a useful and thoroughly good natured way, we went back over his original decision to ensure we were clear on why his very sensible decision criteria had proved to have delivered such a poor result. Our low key analysis decided that: 1) Any of the three mobile carrier's network would have been fine - he doesn't have any business outside the East Coast capital cities and major towns. 2) Buying through a carrier's re-seller was the major error as they had zero expertise in anything beyond taking his initial payments and shipping the sims and modems and could make no further contribution to anything including fixing the wrong plans they signed him up or resolving the billing issues that commenced from his first bill. 3) Turning to a third party systems integrator to take over the project once the error of dealing with a reseller had been determined provided no better result other than paying out a negotiated figure on the 300 sims/modems/plans he had originally paid for and then starting all over again with plans that weren't much better in terms of his needs. 4) The application really needed a static IP which while promised by the reseller and then again by the systems integrator was never going to be provided by the carrier. The conclusion was that he needed to buy from a Layer 2 provider with both the ability and a lot of experience in 'tailoring' plans to meet the needs of specific requirements and who had all the back end abilities to actually deliver exactly what was required. Something he said he would do but it would take some time to get his CEO to listen to such a proposition as they had wasted so much money (over $300,000) and more importantly so much time getting nowhere for twelve months. So it seems like an opportunity for a "company of Exetel's size" (and more importantly for a "company of Exetel's direct expertise and knowledge") to address a completely different segment of the HSPA marketplaces. "Smaller" can be "Better" in some instances....in our case we have a huge amount of expertise in automation and VoIP and HSPA which goes way beyond what the carriers themselves can bring to bear in providing solutions to individual end business users and also more than larger companies than Exetel can provide.
Friday, November 13. 2009Its Deeply Unsatisfying To Run A Business......John Linton ......for some personality types of which I appear to be one. We held our monthly board meeting earlier this week which comprises brief updates by each of Exetel's Australian managers, an in depth examination of the financial state of the business as a whole over the past month and any required modifications of the current operating plan followed by a fixed agenda review of the company in terms of future progress and opportunities which we usually do over lunch in some pleasant restaurant most often. We have been doing this monthly since February 2004 in a similar format and it has proven to be a useful review process to which each of Exetel's three directors contribute to in their different ways. This meeting was as pleasant as most and there were few real problems to address of any urgency but, for reasons I can't put my 'finger on', it was vaguely unsatisfying and that has 'nagged at me' for the past two days. It has become obvious, at least to me, that we have gradually moved away from the initial time frames and 'size' objectives we started the company to achieve getting on for six years ago. Our overall objectives haven't changed in any way at all (providing the lowest cost services at the highest levels of quality and therefore benefiting all Australian human and non-human inhabitants) but the number of customers/annual revenue at which this becomes achievable is turning out to be far larger than our initial estimates of 100,000 customers and a simple product/service set. That is almost certainly due, mostly, to our naivety with a smaller contribution from technology's tendency to widen it's impact each year more significantly than most people plan for. So what I thought might well be possible to accomplish within 5 years is clearly not going to be possible (that time frame having well and truly passed). Which leaves more than one problem. As far as I can see the volumes required to make the sort of difference we had in mind when we decided to 'create' Exetel are going to require something like another 4 years of very, very hard work to achieve and that is assuming the new estimates are more accurate than the estimates we started with; which is by no means certain. Even if the estimates are somewhere in the ball park the size company in terms of personnel and facilities is likely to be at least three times the size of the current company and therefore of a very different composition and operational methodology than the current company and will require very different management styles than that on which we have based Exetel so far. It's not something I can look forward to with any great enthusiasm. I am uncertain whether I, personally, am even close to being the right person to take on such a venture as everything that I personally can contribute to building a small business I have already done over the past six years and, within the limits of a $A50 - $60 million annual revenue company, I am very happy with what we have achieved over that time. I am even happy to complete, should that be possible, the more than doubling of Exetel in terms of revenue and personnel over the next 12 - 18 months by growing the corporate part of our business very rapidly - that is something I know how to do and have little doubt about being able to going very close to achieving it if not achieving it to the last dollar and cent. I'm pretty sure that I also know how to grow our residential business much faster than we have grown it to date but I'm not as sure about that as I am about growing the corporate business. So, perhaps in my arrogance, I am not doubting that we possess the knowledge or ability of achieving the monetary targets that are involved in having a greater effect on the Australian marketplaces that are necessary to bring about the changes that are necessary. I am doubting the desirability of devoting another four years to trying to accomplish that - which if it isn't attempted makes the efforts expended over the past six years by so many people (within and outside Exetel - suppliers and customers) of much less value. I suppose the easiest 'solution' is just to proceed on month by month and see how it turns out - it has worked out pretty much as planned so far in monetary terms for the investors, suppliers and customers so far and the fact that the overall objective has not been even vaguely achieved is probably of only real importance to me - this is my last commercial venture and I wanted it to be a worthwhile contribution to the country of my 'adoption'. Not everyone can always achieve what they want to get from their lives - perhaps some of us have to settle for just trying their best most of the time but not actually ever accomplishing anything.
Thursday, November 12. 2009Will iinet Still Claim To Be "The Third Largest" Whatever It Is?John Linton I read the confirmation that TPG (I know that isn't the official name any more but I will take time to start using SPT) had made a full bid for Pipe yesterday and doubtless the details and 'analysis' will appear in the various media today and then continue until the deal is finalised closer to Christmas. I exchanged views on "what it all means" with the few people I correspond with on the state of the data communications industry in Australia but they had nothing pertinent to say as they had no views (other than the conventional ones that immediately spring to mind) on the topic as there is no information beyond the confirmation of the bid and the fact that it will depend (not that there is much dependence in this particular situation unless someone else decides to make a better offer of course) on due diligence and funding confirmation. So TPG, shortly, becomes 40% or so bigger in terms of market capitalisation and has a range of new issues to deal with - including a lot of debt. what to do in terms of wholesaling and what would be the best way of operating the different pieces of the Pipe business it may or may not choose to keep. None of this affects Exetel in any way other than deciding what we will do about the few links we buy from Pipe (around $A40,000 a month from memory) which, for safety reasons, I guess we will move to a neutral carrier at the appropriate time. Perhaps other companies like Exetel will do the same but I have no idea. As there has been a 'material change of ownership' of Pipe I would think that the overwhelming majority of the contracts that Pipe have would now be void and that some unknown percentage of current Pipe retail and wholesale customers will take that opportunity to re-assess their circumstances. You would think that some companies would see this particular ownership change as being not in their best interests though that will eventually depend on the costs of moving the services to a new provider in most cases. Perhaps TPG will simply acquire the company and then sell off the wholesale part of the business (to Vocus?) or to some other entity and simply keep the infrastructure? Either way it seems very unlikely that TPG would care very much about the revenues currently being derived from wholesale customers nor would have taken future wholesale revenue in to any decision to acquire the Pipe infrastructure which, as I previously guessed at, was to do with controlling more of the network (and therefore the costs) that is needed to deliver their own services to large end users in the major cities and to boost the old Comindico national backbone around the country generally.....whether that may well pose some difficulties of aggregation and amalgamation....only TPG would know whatever that may be. I would think that the debt on the overseas cable would be of such a magnitude that it wouldn't provide TPG with lower cost international IP transit than they already get from their own SX link but I wouldn't really know. Taking on so much additional debt (both the money they will need to borrow to buy Pipe plus the large debt contained within Pipe) appears to be a very atypical and bold move. The major 'strange' thing about the deal is that TPG would elect to pay a premium price to acquire Pipe given their track record (most evident in the 'sale' of TPG to SPT last year) of only paying a bargain basement price for any acquisition (at first sight the PE ratios look very, very high for such a transaction). Maybe that's what they've done in this instance as well - it just isn't evident from the little that is known at the moment. However paying a premium to acquire quite a lot of debt plus having to pay interest on the money used to buy the assets seems out of line with how David Teoh grew TPG over the past 20 years - time will tell as it always does. I don't know what this 'deal' means in any general sense to anyone other than TPG's shareholders (and, of course, Pipes shareholders who become richer than they were before the offer was made and Australia's luxury goods sellers will get a boost once the money actually changes hands). If I had to guess I would say that UEcomm, AAPT and Optus would pick up the majority of Pipe's wholesale business over the coming twelve or so months but that isn't really of a size to make much difference to any of those companies revenues or profits on wholesale services. I would hazard a guess that TPG will become more involved in the medium/medium large business marketplaces around the capital cities and that may well be because they see an end to any real growth in their ADSL marketplaces and need new revenue streams in a hurry. So no real changes around the industry. It will be interesting to see what the larger ISPs who committed to buying international IP from Pipe now do.
Wednesday, November 11. 2009Continuous Growth Brings New Issues.......John Linton .....that are always challenging and are the next most difficult problems a start up business has to deal with once/if it makes it past the first five years. Earlier this week Exetel hired its 39th employee in Australia which, together with the 36 people employed in Sri Lanka comprises that figure. This is a 50% increase since the beginning of 2009 and by far the fastest personnel growth in a year (which is not yet ended) that we have ever had. In Australia this is almost entirely due to adding sales and engineering personnel to our corporate sales operations which has grown from 3 to 14 in that period and to our residential technical, provisioning and billing support in Sri Lanka which has almost doubled over the same period. So far we have coped with the new demands such relatively 'rapid' growth brings with it but it has become very obvious that the 'challenges' are increasing rather than reducing. Exetel has no 'human resources' functions and won't have for as long as I have a say in how the company is operated but we do face the issues that are inevitably brought by continuous hiring and our hiring program, should we continue to meet our objectives, is to add another 50 people over the coming year which, in simple terms, is a 66% growth over today's establishments. Apart from the inherent difficulties in growing the financial side of the business 'watering down' the operational knowledge levels and management experience of any company by these successive percentages is an extremely difficult set of problems. In my, limited, experiences the major success factor within a small company is the obvious dedication and expertise of the company's founders (presuming they actually have any and the company continues to survive) and the very close working relationships they build with each new person they bring in to the hot house environment of a start up struggling to survive and grow. As the company grows these relationships are no longer possible and inevitably all growing companies lose that key advantage over time. The other major problem is that small companies, of necessity, have to entrust people with key aspects of running and operating the company which if they leave to pursue their careers elsewhere leaves big gaps in both the operational knowledge and skills and the overall 'balance' of any small company. Exetel has been exceptionally fortunate to date that it's personnel loss is extremely low year by year and our decision to automate 'practically everything' has minimised/eliminated the damage of 'operational damage loss' if we ever did lose a 'key' person. Moving forward to and past 100 people in two different countries we will begin to lose those 'insurances' we have benefited from over the past almost six years. Recognising that is one thing - doing something about it is much more complex and much more difficult. When I worked for large multinationals it always amazed me at how little people only two levels of management up from the 'coal face' knew about what was actually happening within their direct responsibilities and how incredibly ignorant they were about the abilities/no-abilities and attitudes the people they were directly responsible for - but then, as I grew more experienced/older I realised that they weren't running a mainframe business or a telco - they were running a bottom line result with so much 'fat' in the margins that their understanding of what was going on was largely irrelevant. I would like to be able to say that I know exactly what to do to avoid these, seemingly inevitable, problems of growth - but I don't and I have never found any sensible advice let alone reputable case studies that would provide examples and/or inspiration. Most companies accept the efficiency loss and, if they continue to be successful, bury it in revenue and profit growth and never miss it. My one real experience of growing a business from start up to several hundred people provides no usable lessons because it was a long time ago and I was a very different person then with very different objectives. Obviously hundreds of thousands of companies in Australia have made such a transition successfully and have found all sorts of ways of accomplishing it with a huge variety of managements that haven't found it to be any problem......so I shouldn't concern myself with such trivialities.....but I do. I suppose the best way of looking at it is that Exetel has grown slowly up to very recently and I didn't even notice when our number of personnel passed 50 so what has changed? That is obviously true in many ways and it's a comfort. If our business is as soundly based as it appears to have been and is today then there should not be the problems I have speculated about here and for the past few days , or more correctly nights. We have our monthly board meeting today and I will raise the issue for serious future consideration.
Tuesday, November 10. 2009The American's Care, The British Care......John Linton ....but Peter Garrett (the posturing clown with zero knowledge or qualifications who's "celebrity status" as an uneducated, superannuated pop singer is Labor's idea of a Federal Minister For Conservation, Environment and Arts) doesn't give a damn, and the Australian people generally never go out of their way to inform themselves of the critical problems affecting Australia's natural heritage. http://www.scientificamerican.com/blog/post.cfm?id=last-chance-to-save-the-christmas-i-2009-09-08 It is a national disgrace that Garrett is so totally inept that the pipistrelle bat is likely to become the first Australian mammal to become extinct in 53 years and so typical of the lack of care by the Federal Government's of the past twenty years of completely bizarre and uncaring attitudes to the Australian environment - none more so than the current poltroon appointed to the top position in Australia whose record to date is the environmental equivalent of inviting Attila the Hun and a few of his generals in to your house to inspect your fine art collection....the result is totally predictable. If you care at all, in any way, about the future of Australia's flora, fauna and avia please make your total disgust at this situation known directly to Garrett (the Butcher Of Kingsford) by contacting him via the appropriate channels which can be found here: http://www.aph.gov.au/house/members/memfeedback.asp?id=HV4 and remind that jerk that he, and only he, is being paid to keep Australia's natural heritage alive not simply ponce around at fancy dinners and conferences saying how important the environment is while his every action since being appointed makes a Gold Coast developer look like the favoured candidate for conservationist of the century. Why don't more Australians care about the environment? It has puzzled me almost from the first year I came to this country that apart from the occasional 'conscience donation' to an environmental protection organisation very, very few people who live in this country ever lift a finger to understand the severe problems that exist let alone lift a finger to do anything about anything at all. Of all the countries on the planet Australia has more endangered species than any other yet Federal and State governments do practically nothing, the bare minimum that they can get away with, and the people who elect those governments appear to care even less. The ONLY answer to the current dreadful scenario is for more people to insist that more is done and that no species in Australia should be allowed to drift to extinction by people like Garrett's total indifference to his responsibilities. I know that any single individual can do practically nothing on their own - the problems affecting Australia have been brought into existence by thousands of years of ignorance and more lately just plain untrammeled greed, bribery and neglect. However there are many small organisations that do have devoted individuals that do make a difference in almost every community around Australia that need hands on and financial support and every Australian could make a difference by supporting such organisations. Unfortunately I don't pay as much attention to these key issues as I should - with the vast majority of my waking hours being taken up by trying to keep a small commercial company alive and with an ongoing future. I, personally, simply don't have the money needed to make more than an infinitisimal 'dent' in the huge task of restoring Australia's environment to where it needs to be. Exetel is able, via its customers donations to provide some $A500,000 a year to a few community based conservation projects and that helps a little but is a 'drop in the bucket' to what is needed. Exetel can probably do more by being more 'creative'. One of the ideas we have been considering is getting our suppliers to involve themselves in 'a voluntary contribution' to projects dedicated to preventing specific Australian species becoming extinct by supporting those organisations via charging them a 1% 'tax' on the value of any purchases we make from them which would be done by deducting that amount of money from any bill we pay - our purchases are around $A50,000,000 a year so that would double the contribution that Exetel could make in this financial year had such a program been in place at the start of the year. So, with not very much effort, a small company like Exetel could donate $A1 million a year to conservation projects. If ten percent of all Australian commercial enterprises took the same/similar/other initiatives then Australia would have no environmental problems and we could stop wasting tax payer money providing troughs of tax payer dollars for people like Garrett to suck dry. For any impossibly difficult problem to be solved only takes the desire of enough people to solve it - there are far more than enough people in Australia to ensure that no Australian species ever becomes extinct, or even threatened by extinction - if only enough Australians make a minimal effort to bring that about.
Monday, November 9. 2009Christmas Is Coming........John Linton ......though as I no longer work in the CBD I don't know whether the Christmas tree has been erected in Martin Place together with its grotesque decorations. I do know that I have received a far greater number of "please join us The new ADSL applications over the weekend were strangely at a new record level - although weekend applications seldom run at more than 25% of a 'working day' application level they were at close to 40% over both days of this weekend with ADSL2 applications overtaking ADSL1 applications for the first time in over two months - though, as I said, on much lower volumes. Maybe this is an indication that the 'pre-Christmas rush' has started early this year or perhaps the new plans we finally completed adding to the web site have gained us a little traction after they have been 'examined and considered'. Residential sales usually increase by around 30% in the second half of November and the first half of December so maybe this is just following the annual pattern a little earlier than usual. Another sign of Christmas is that, usually, commercial employers seldom consider hiring people at this time of year in anticipation of the annual business slow down and, for the more parsimonious, the three public holidays and the 'dead days' between Christmas and New Year. Exetel, a very small company, doesn't hire many people at any time of the year being doubly blessed by almost no loss of personnel and a constantly developing automation of all of our processes. This year, for several different reasons, we are finding ourselves in a different situation with continuous hiring being done in Sri Lanka and the fact that we are about to try and hire 5 new sales trainees for the Sydney business and corporate sales teams......a unique experience in our short history. It's the 'wrong' time of year in most respects to be trying to hire new graduates which may well mean we don't succeed in finding the right sort of people - never having hired people in November/December I have no idea. So for once it looks to me as though we will be much busier over November/December/January than we have been since Exetel began offering end user services getting on for six years ago. I think that if you had asked me then whether I still expected to be working as 'hands on' and such long hours at Exetel back in January 2004 I would have laughed at the thought. However things haven't turned out as I expected and probably never had any chance of doing so. I have learned the difference between patience and hesitancy over the past six years and now understand that it will take at least a full ten years for Exetel to go anywhere close to achieving what we originally, in our ignorance and optimism, thought could be achieved in less than five years. So the task now is to make the most of the opportunity to consolidate our good start to building our corporate business more rapidly using the amazing 'promotional discount' from one of our suppliers and see if we can take full advantage of the 'slow down' in the residential ADSL marketplace via the newly constructed plans and the likely changes that will occur in those marketplaces. Then there is the 'new directions' for HSPA and the hard decisions we will have to make to bring them about. Perhaps Christmas can't come too soon? Sunday, November 8. 2009VoIP Using Mobile HSPA......John Linton .....but this time thinking through how to deal with the slimiest 'competitors' before spending the money. We have been attempting to source/write a realistically configurable and easily usable 'universal' application to allow an end user to use VoIP over their mobile telephone via data rather than pay the mobile call costs - which, capped plans or not, are much higher than the 10 cent unlimited length call to any local or national number provided by VoIP. Even a 15 cent a minute call to mobile is much lower than the vast majority of mobile tariffs and of course a 5 cent to 8 cent SMS is much lower than 'standard' mobile rates. Then there are international calls at two or so cents a minute via VOIP versus the enormously high costs via mobile tariffs. So, clearly a compelling case to provide an application that will allow a mobile handset user to do this....but absolutely not in the mobile carrier's interests in allowing this to happen given the decade and a half practice of giving away handsets and recovering the cost via 24 month lock in contracts and sky high mobile rates. I have used Fring, Nimbuzz and our own beta versions of VoIP over HSPA for over a year now and have never had a problem that couldn't be solved by a re-dial. However my use of a mobile phone is pretty much restricted to making and receiving calls and I don't even keep an address book of 'most called' numbers as I figure that if I can't remember the number then there really is no point in calling the person concerned....and I realise I'm a one off weirdo mobile phone user so my experience, other than determining call clarity in different circumstances is irrelevant. Our other testers, both inside and outside the company, continued to have criticisms of the software we developed so we have never been able to make VoIP over HSPA a commercial 'product' up to now. As time has passed there are an increasing number of third party developers who have produced their versions of a 'full blown' MoIP application and, in despair of ever writing our own application we have selected one of those products to test and see if it does address all of the criticisms/lack of function that we have been unable to overcome. My testing this week indicates that it does even forcing me to implement some of the functions I personally would never use. It will take a further 6 - 8 weeks to actually turn the testing phase into a deliverable product but we have now decided to do that with the hope that we can deliver the product, a year late, in January 2010. Our liking of this concept is, ignoring my personal dislike of "capped plans", that we can sell a data service for mobile users that provides a mobile call service over HSPA at a fraction of any other mobile call plan they currently use. As we have no current commitment with any mobile carrier that involves us in selling mobile plans with "caps" or other "minimum" monthly usage restrictions we have far more 'freedom' than any of the current carriers or their wholesale channels. After our recent experiences with dealing with this problem in our first major marketing of HSPA this is more than a bonus - it's an absolute requirement. Doubtless I will make some major error of judgment in this replacement strategy as I did in the first one but I will take the sliminess of some competitors into account this time. I think the call costs, including 2 cents a minute calls to ten or so 'popular' countries from a mobile handset that has an application that installs in less than a minute once the HSPA service has been activated is a very attractive proposition for private users but it is 'blow you away' offer for business users combining the values of calls between employee mobiles are uncharged, calls from the employees mobiles to their office telephone numbers are uncharged and there are no minimum spends and no contracts......but if I go on I'll give too much away to the Exetel copyists. Suffice to say, as we push further into the corporate market the ability to integrate high speed Ethernet data, VoIP for general business telephone services, business mobile handset data and VoIP services and SMS from the data base and other sources. So I'm happy with the product I'm using and the other testers no longer criticise the lack of features and facilities that were shortcomings of our own developments so maybe Exetel can finally offer the very best and by far the lowest cost mobile service in Australia after over five years of trying. I see no reason, based on my usage to date, that Exetel's mobile offering in 2010 will be even more cost effective than our broadband offerings have always been. Maybe I've got more hard lessons to learn?
Saturday, November 7. 2009TPG - The 'New' Carrier?John Linton Doubtless everybody other than me has worked out what symbiosis is being planned by TPG/Pipe given the simultaneous requests for suspension of trading in their shares by to the ASX last Tuesday. As TPG not so long ago bought its own Southern Cross access the obvious statements that TPG was looking to reduce its international IP costs make no sense to me. I think Steve was more likely to be on the money with his comment that TPG has now had a chance to fully assess the limitations of the old Comindico network that was being used by Soul and saw the chance to buy into/the whole of Pipe to gain access to its national/city links rather than the IP and all of its debt. Whatever the reality is will presumably be known next week and will also explain the placement of 20% of Pipe's shares at a long way North of the last trading price - presuming the two are linked which seems more likely than not. The 'scuttlebutt' back in March/April of this year (I can't remember exactly when) from sources senior enough and knowledgeable enough to have some credibility (if only because there weren't either Australians or based in Australia and were heavily involved in international IP provision) was that while Pipe had managed to 're-arrange' its financial problems by the 'skin of its teeth' in January/February 2009 but would face an even bigger financial problem around November/December 2009. It was a snippet in a much longer conversation on IP pricing in the future and I paid little attention to it then. If in fact TPG are going to invest in Pipe then I would see it as Steve sees it - a means of obtaining access to a much better National network but I would go further and think that TPG has looked at future growth in its residential business and has not liked what it sees and Pipe's major city dark fibre is a very attractive asset that it could use to protect future revenue growth forecasts either by lowering its cost of delivering business services or by wholesaling IP and national/city transit. Personally, I find two things very, very strange about the concept of TPG buying Pipe or even investing heavily in Pipe. The first, and blindingly obvious fact is that Pipe's shares last traded at a very high price (ignoring the apparent 20% placement at an even higher price which would make sense in that it would provide the money needed to meet the upcoming financial commitments but at such a premium it ....well..it's hard to think of a scenario under which such a price would be paid - unless it was part shares/part pre-payment of future network use). The other very strange thing is that David Teoh has made an almost art form out of his 'take overs' of commercial entities. He has always paid rock bottom dollar for distressed assets - I don't think in TPG's history there is any other type of acquisition transaction....maybe I'm wrong. If TPG actually is buying Pipe then it will make TPG a much more serious company than the company it is today and, presumably, will begin to accelerate the loss of stranglehold on the medium/medium large business market exercised by Telstra (and to a lesser extent by Optus and AAPT) both in data and wire line telephony which provides very, very high profits to all three of those companies. Depending on a whole host of variables it would seem to me to be something for those companies to actually worry about - as far as I can see the debt burden on the undersea cable and the tumbling pricing of IP in Australia would make the cable component of Pipe the least attractive part of Pipe - I would have thought almost a deal breaker.....if the debt can't be off loaded. I have no interest in the general manouverings within the communications industry but as Exetel is moving to more involvement in the corporte marketplace the ramifications of this scenario of interent to us. A combination of TPGs small business base, Soul's old government customers/ NSW Comindico network and Pipe's additional national infrastructure and larger corporate customers would make a pretty useful 'challenger' to the three large carriers that dominate the business market at the moment. Then again it all might be something quite different.....as Chris suggests in his comment - maybe it's all about Vocus?
Friday, November 6. 2009The Electronic Age Does Have Some DownsidesJohn Linton I mentioned that we are contemplating adding more floor space to allow us to grow our corporate business more rapidly having just about used up the 'spare space' we obtained when we purchased a 450 sqm floor which we moved in to in June this year. If we do keep growing our corporate business in terms of the volumes we have planned then it is inevitable that we will need more floor space in the very near future. Unless we get lucky enough and are brave enough to buy twice what we have now (or more) and then selling our recent purchase we will be faced with splitting our Sydney office into two parts which, while not any sort of logistical issue does have various less specific issues. As a company we have now got roughly half of our personnel in Colombo and half in North Sydney with two Level 3 engineers working from their homes on the NSW Central Coast and Canberra. Steve has been working from his home in Perth half of each month for the past six years and Annette has also worked from home almost all the time. I only work from the office a few hours a day (usually on the days I have meetings with suppliers or other entities. So you would think we would be used to operating is a 'dispersed' environment with at least half the company never in the same physical proximity to the other half....and that is true. However I have some qualms about splitting the Australian company into two separate locations which I can't exactly 'put my finger on'. In 'the old days' there were significant expenses incurred in having two separate offices (two PABXs, two sets of ISDN lines, call costs between offices, two expensive data links, two reception areas, receptionists etc) but in today's electronic office there are no PABXs or receptionists or data links and much inter-personnel communication is conducted via email or mutual access to the same data bases (either our own or our suppliers). So, given that half the company already works in another country why am I hesitant? I really don't know as there appears to be far less reason in this day and age for multiple locations to pose any sort of issue at all. In the case of Colombo the cost advantages were so massive it took no consideration beyond double checking the financial assumptions. Technically it makes no difference whether Steve is in Perth or at the next desk in terms of any sort of communication or access - but it isn't 'quite as good' as a face to face presence - and I know it should be but I don't 'feel' it is. The same applies to our work from home personnel and particularly our Colombo based personnel. It all works very well but there is, very definitely, something missing. Whether what is missing (and I can't define it) actually produces a positive or negative effect, irrespective of how minor, I don't know but I'm inclined to think it's negative rather than positive. This makes me quite reluctant to actually start the process of looking for additional floor space to split the company again. So a bit of a dilemma because there is very little time to make a go/no go decision as it is and my equivocation is very unhelpful. The 'cop out' would be to take a lease somewhere and 'see how it goes', but that would forgo the opportunity of taking advantage of the big fall in commercial real estate prices in the Sydney CBD and the, still, very low interest rates which while not a 'deal killer' certainly provide future lower costs. I suppose the other thing that concerns me is the 'gamble' that Exetel's current progress in building a hundred million dollar a year corporate business will run out of 'steam' for all sorts of reasons and we will not need as much of the planned space as we think we do - but that isn't a major factor - just something that creeps in to your mind when you are hesitating about making a decision. If you want to think negatively about any issue it always seems easier to find reasons not to do something than reasons to do something....even for impatient people like me. As far as I can see there is no reason to think that the unarguable rationales that lead to the conclusion that there are huge opportunities for Exetel in the corporate marketplace are incorrect in any way and growing the corporate business is simply applying the right amount of thinking and continuing to be successful in recruiting the right people. I suppose one of the ongoing problems of running a small business is that there are always more problems to consider than any single person can ever find the time to deal with....and delaying any decision simply ensures there is less time to deal with the next issues that continue to present themselves.
Thursday, November 5. 2009Residential ADSL - No Real Future?John Linton We met with our bank manager yesterday to discuss the various possibilities of buying new floor space in the event that our planned growth in developing our business revenues much more quickly continues to stay on track and to get his/his bank's views on the economy over the next 12 months. All bank managers are loathe to express any firm opinions that could, in any ways, be considered 'advice' in the legal senses of that word but he didn't say anything that varied from our own views as far as I could determine. In essence he sees no reason why we shouldn't buy additional floor space up to an ex gst buy price of less then $A2.5 million and the bank would be happy to lend us the money if that's what we decided to do. So that was the only barrier that may have prevented from us doing this out of the way and the dependency now is just what we see as the future of the Exetel business in these changing times. He did ask one pertinent question which was "why, after almost six years of constant fast and profitable growth, are we thinking of changing direction so significantly". It is an obvious question to which there is a very obvious answer of course....essentially the residential ADSL market is now approaching nine years 'old' and it is 'saturated' in terms of further growth and under challenge by at least two new technologies. This is seperately indicated by the ABS results published in August 2009 showing that in the first six months of this year the number of ADSL users didn't grow at all and the same indication reported by both Telstra and Optus in their full year annual reports around the same time. David Thodey's recent (last week) share holder briefing also tended to confirm this view with his statement of Telstra's broadband numbers of 2,500,000 ADSL users (after nine years) and over 1,000,000 HSPA users (after two years) with a further comment that it seemed likely that Telstra would have more HSPA users than ADSL users within 2 - 3 years. If you look at what has been happening in terms of residential ADSL 'offers' from a variety of suppliers over the past few months you very much get the impression that there is a 'desperation' in them trying desperately to attract users with more and more downloads but almost no (no?) downward per plan level price movement - usually the signs of selling as low as you can go but it isn't working. It will be interesting to see what, if anything, Telstra's foreshadowed ADSL price reductions achieve if they in fact transpire as 'promised' by Mr Thodey at the cited Telstra share holder briefing. So, it appears to me, that the residential ADSL marketplace, at nine years old, is approaching its 'use by date' and is characterised by the 'use by date' scenarios of - no growth, intense competition,no ability to innovate/me tooism rampant and reducing margins for profit. The business market on the other hand appears to be the total reverse - with one massive, once in a generation, plus - for Exetel. Like the residential ADSL marketplaces the business marketplace is well past the sunset years of the major technology used by smaller businesses - SHDSL. It is now well past ten years that the first 2mbps/2mbps SHDSL circuits were the revolution in small/medium business internet delivery mechanisms with something like close to a 400,000 of that type of circuit in use around Australia. The overwhelming majority of thise circuits are being provided by the major carriers and, amazingly, the average price of such circuits is a staggeringly high $1,500 to $1,800 per month. Recently, as with all delivery technologies, innovation has provided the ability for a small company like Exetel to offer the same speed service for one quarter of the cost of a carrier's service or alternatively offer a 20mbps/20mbps circuit for half the current carrier supplied service......a compelling offer for most sensibly run businesses. But it gets even better than that. As can be seen from the current "inability" of the ADSL suppliers to reduce their prices per customer the same issue prevents the carriers from offering their current totally over charged customers the benefits of the new technology - they can't afford to take the 75% reduction in their current small/medium business revenues. This applies to the carriers and any other suppliers that have built an SHDSL user base over the past ten years - the technology is available to them but they won't offer it because they would destroy their business revenue bases. So the opportunity exists, as it often does once every decade or so, to use the new technology cycle to offer compelling cost and performance benefits in marketplaces where the incumbent suppliers have every reason not to offer the benefits to their customers and there becomes a 1 - 2 year 'window' in which a company that both recognises and is able to invest in taking advantage of that opportunity can achieve revenue, profit and market share gains that are only occasionally available. That's the theory. The investment in people and training as well as the cost of floor space and facilities is of course massive for a company of Exetel's size and financial resources. But compared to the current ADSL residential marketplaces......no brainer really.
Wednesday, November 4. 2009Melbourne Cup Day Passes......John Linton .....with yet another inability to retire by failing to bring home the 10,000 - 1 quadrella and you realise, yet again, that it's 'almost Christmas'. Exetel's business has gone so well over the first four months that we 'declared' Melbourne Cup day to be an extra public holiday for Australian personnel who (with the exception of Steve) are all based in NSW or the ACT. Most of them took it and the dedicated finance team who decided they needed to work as it was the day after billing day were given an extra annual leave day to take at some later date. Annette and I took time off to have a quiet lunch in the CBD in one of the few restaurants that wasn't running a Melbourne Cup day event which we enjoyed....before returning to work But it is almost Christmas and all of our plans for 'Christmas promotions' (such as they modestly were) have come to nothing with the sought after hardware still a month or so away and our two other "great ideas" and the other things we had expected to be able to do becoming non-starters due to supplier indifference. Never mind - we will have to come up with something else though on our fragile margins there is never much room for 'specials'. 'Christmas Celebratory Event Invitations' began arriving in the last half of October and we advised our people of the date of the Exetel end of year event a few days ago which adds some sort of impetus to the feeling that this year is nearly over and I haven't done anything like what I had hoped to do in this calendar twelve months and, yet again, I don't know where all the time has gone....except that it has. Part of this lack of progress may be because my view of the current marketplaces in which we operate is that at least half of them are far tougher than they were during the recession/GFC/whatever and it is more difficult to read their future than at any time since I have been involved with them. Perhaps that is because of my failing abilities or perhaps I never actually could but only kidded myself I understood them - probably the more likely of the two options. I base this on two main things - the increased efforts it requires for us to achieve our monthly revenue targets and the amount of "lower price offers" by a range of other suppliers across a range of services - the "lower prices" are expressed in many different ways few of which actually seem to provide real lower prices - more for the same appears to be the majority of offers. The more cautious of the economic 'experts' I bother to read or listen to all seem to be saying the same thing - that business conditions are probably tougher now (in the EU and the USA) than they have been seen to be because of the government hand outs which did nothing to improve conditions in any real sense but simply deferred, slightly, effects of widespread business downturns with the double whammy effect of loading even more debt on to banking systems that were not coping with their then levels of debt before the US and UK governments borrowed a trillion and a quarter ($US) more over the past twelve or so months. As a total economic ignoramus I have no way of actually understanding what is happening or will happen over the coming months in terms of how much individuals and commercial entities have to spend and whether or not they will spend more or less than they have done over the last 4 months - not a clue. I am presuming the various governments around Australia will be forced to spend less because they have no more capacity to borrow and will now have to start paying back the money they have p***ed away over the past year. So all the 'signs' (competitors reducing prices, suppliers reducing prices, more efforts needed to make targets, extreme caution urged by the better respected economic commentators) are of tougher times now than twelve months ago. Our bank manager is coming to see us later this morning as we are thinking of doubling our floor space buying another floor somewhere in North Sydney or the CBD to cater for our planned growth in the business market places and it will be interesting to hear his views on what is happening generally and his views on how sensible it is for us to continue to try to double the size of our small business over the coming year. We could always rent but we have a view that Exetel shouldn't do that for its core business needs just as we pay cash for routers, switches and all other capital expenditure. It will be interesting to see just how 'happy' this Christmas turns out to be.
Tuesday, November 3. 2009Trust Me - I'm A Labor PoliticianJohn Linton You may have read that Lindsay Tanner (the Labor Government's Finance Minister) has been saying that the Krudd 'NBN2' shouldn't, and isn't going to be, subject to the promised cost/benefit analysis because "it is a unique situation" and it is "obvious that something has to be done without further delay". I wonder what planet Tanner lives on to be able to say that ANY government should embark on a huge national expenditure without determining whether it is justified? I, like anyone else who has not been provided with some semblance of an expenditure analysis and the basis on which revenue will be generated to recover that cost couldn't possibly comment on whether any project is worth the money spent on it. Kenneth Davidson has made some points in this: http://www.smh.com.au/small-business/competition-is-gouging-phone-users-20091102-hscp.html that address the issue based on a couple of figures that he has found from somewhere or other. However Davidson's points aren't as relevant as Tanner's 'running for cover' - Tanner obviously does have access to whatever 'back of a bus ticket' figures are what Krudd and co based their public statements about the need and the costs of the second version of their nonsensical approach to demolishing Australia's communications industry and, equally obviously, he knows they make no sense at all. For a key financial member of an Australian government (any government) to try and use rhetoric to rather than financial analysis to justify the largest expenditure in Australian history shows just what a total shambles the 'NBN2' is. Davidson doesn't actually need any figures to make his two main points that the real issue is that, irrespective of what is spent on building a 'new' network all that can possibly happen is that the current telecommunications delivery in Australia will become less competitive and more than possibly less capable. Whether you agree with his premises and his demonstration of the consequences or not he does draw attention to the fact that it isn't simply the money that hasn't been analysed it's the whole concept of ripping up the current processes and infrastructures and replacing them with processes and infrastructures that haven't even begun to be looked at. I am no fan of Telstra or the way it operated under El Sol and his carpet bagging cronies and I certainly don't know that Mr Thodey and his drones will be any better but, when all is said and done, Every Australian and every Australian business depends on the Telstra owned network for every aspect of their communications. There is little doubt that the costs of that network to the end user are too expensive when compared to some other countries facilities - this is partly due to the size of the land mass and the sparseness of the population density and partly due to the inefficiency of 100 years of monopoly. However neither of those issues is going to addressed (the first one can't be addressed in any way) by replacing one operating monopoly with a new government owned monopoly that has yet to even build, let alone operate, a complex new network. So Mr Tanner tells us that this 'Huxleyan' situation shouldn't be subjected to cost/benefit analysis because it's obvious that Australian citizens and businesses need "faster broad band" and it must be built quickly irrespective of the cost and irrespective of what effect it has on the current communications network. How so totally Whitlamesque in its total stupidity those statements are and like the great Whitlam stupidities how unbelievably dangerous they will prove to be - just like Whitlam's drug induced (the drug in Whitlam's case being his gigantic ego) wild fantasies of his "Better Australia" - which ruined Australia's economy and set Australian business back by 20 years. Never mind - it appears that Krudd's word is accepted by over 60% of the electorate so, unless the opposition and cross bench Senators can actually lay their hands on some commonsense and indisputable facts that they can explain to that 60% of morons in simple enough terms for them to understand the Australian communications industry will descend in to chaos over the next five years for all the reasons that are obvious to anyone with a scintilla of understanding of how communications services are delivered in this country. A coherent opposition is about as likely as Krudd looking in a mirror and not seeing 'God' so it will have to be chaos for Australia's residential users unless the LTE deliverability moves forward a year or so. Never mind if the boxed trifecta of: Viewed, Basaltico and Alcopop comes home then we can all retire and insulate ourselves from the Krudd Imperium.
Monday, November 2. 2009Widespread Theft And The Impact On SocietyJohn Linton The current law suit against iinet (for which you can read all http://online.wsj.com/article/SB125673511227012955.html There is no doubt whatsoever that all EU countries will proceed to introduce similar laws (as Ireland has already) to prevent the wholesale looting of entertainment companies 'warehouses' by predominantly 14 year old males from families that have non fit for use parents and who attend schools where teaching conventional morality or the rationale of societal imperatives is an alien concept - or their ethics retarded older equivalents. Presumably the 'live by' motto above the lintel of these children's residences is: I Can Steal And Not Suffer The Consequences - Therefore I Do Amid the vacuity and just sheer total 'take your breath away' lying stupidity of the defence being offered by iinet is the loss of any understanding that condoning the stealing of other people's property, of whatever type, leads to the destruction of any form of civilised society. iinet's "not my problem mate" defence is as cynical and just plain wrong as any defence could be. Ignoring the fact that theft destroys society and therefore seriously harms every inhabitant of that society is ridiculous. Trying to pretend theft is not taking place or trying to pretend it is someone else's problem is so stupid that it beggars the imagination. To also try and pretend that you are unaware that your facilities (which you totally control) are not being used for theft makes you a lying poltroon. So - should anyone wish to defend the theft of other entities property - why would the governments of three sensibly governed countries take a completely opposing view? There can be no reason other than a country's government is responsible for the maintenance, among many other things, of the protection of its citizen's property and the putting in place of the protections that ensure that happens. Australia isn't too far behind better governed countries around the world and there is NO doubt that similar laws will be eventually promulgated here and the effective policing of the protection of copyright material will become a reality. Despite the lying statements by iinet's defence (put up as obfuscation in conjunction with the IIA - and we all know who that means) that the detecting and preventing the downloading of illegally obtained material is 'onerous to the point of impracticality' the moment such a law is passed it will be seen that it is neither onerous nor impractical....it is trivial and totally practical. So when this court case finishes and any subsequent appeal is heard and ruled on the fact will be that iinet will lose and the Federal Government of the day will enact legislation that formalises the court ruling very quickly by toughening one or two clauses in the Australian Telecommunications Act - but I can't remember the exact references nor can I bother to look them up for the purpose of this blog. The only thing that is in any way remarkable about the current law suit is that it has to happen at all. It is a commentary on business ethics in Australia today (clearly individual Australian's ethics are a totally lost cause) that any company with even a passing regard for doing the right thing would be needed to be taken to court to be made to understand that stealing other people's property is wrong and that they have an obligation to the society in which they carry out their commercial activities to play a part , where they are able, to maintain that society's moral and ethical obligations. Is it really a case of the ISPs who are members of the IIA condoning illegal downloads so they can profit by charging for the traffic carried in those activities? Is iinet really spending more than a million dollars of its shareholder's money trying to defend theft as a way of doing business? Does anyone really believe that a 14 year old that learns that stealing someone else's property has no 'punishment' doesn't transfer that view into other criminal activities?
Sunday, November 1. 2009A Lovely Sydney Summers Day, Record Billings, All Is Right With The World...John Linton .....or is it? We have had another record billing month for October and the recurrent revenue billing for November was also a record with a larger than usual increase. New ADSL applications were also at a record and, as I said yesterday, business Ethernet and SHDSL new customers were a new record . All in all a very satisfying set of results in what continues to look like a harder than average year. (Arsenal also beat Tottenham which is always a bonus). So, as usual, billing day provides a pleasant start to the day with another step along the way accomplished and another month 'to make happen'. We have completed almost all of the changes to the new ADSL plans in place now and the overall reaction to them seems to be very positive (from both our current customers and new applying customers). The move back to an uncounted 12 hour period of 12 midnight to 12 noon is good to be able to do again and we will continue to work on bringing that option to all ADSL2 plan users over the next month or so should our abilities to find a suitable carrier at suitable rates prove to be successful - we have refused to compromise on exactly what we need and have rejected a variety of 'offers' from several potential providers.So I think there are things to do to make sure the ADSL2 plans we offer become more attractive than they are now but we are certainly not going to do that unless we get exactly what we need to make that happen. So - everything bright and beautiful? Yes it is - right at this moment and four the first four months of this financial year so far. I really have nothing at all to worry or 'complain' about....except....and I share this view with several acquaintances and friends......none of have been affected by the "GFC" (it simply didn't happen to us or anyone in business we know in other parts of the world) but at least I attribute that to the massive amount of borrowed dollars used by governments around the world to replace real spending (of earned money) with indiscriminate 'government hand out' money. No government of any country can continue to borrow to try and give real earned money time to pick up to 'normal' levels and it seems, based on the media I read/watch/listen to that there is now no more money for either the US or the UK government to borrow and the Chinese and India governments are also reaching the limits of what they are prepared to spend domestically to prop up their own manufacturers. Quite possibly pointless speculation by people with absolutely no economic knowledge (me and some ignorant acquaintances) but all of us are at least 'uneasy' and some of (not me at this time) are putting in place more conservative plans than they did last when Krudd was 'elected'. Although everything looks 'rosy' from our own sales and revenue results I do get a distinct impression that the same is not the case for more than one of our major suppliers. Also, why I am absolutely delighted with the progress we are making in the business market I also get the impression that more businesses than at any over the past two years are more receptive to reducing their costs even in the sensitive area of data communications. I understand that this 'feeling' is simply a 'feeling' but it isn't just me that is cautious about how much more money Krudd and co will borrow to hide the fact that there is no real confidence anywhere in the Australian economy and maybe what is being touted as increasing optimism is simply relief that, so far, the damage has been limited. Whatever turns out to be the actual situation it would seem to me that caution in terms of assuming that business is back to 'normal' and that the economy will return to a sensible level of growth is still the right approach to take in most things our business is involved in. I don't think it is the time to be stamping on the accelerator....though we are already fairly heavily committed to doing that in two areas of our business. I think that it will become clearer after Christmas as to whether Australia generally is going to be a better place in which to do business with whatever is really happening in the Australian economy over November - January hidden by the strangeness of these three months in the Australian economy. Irrespective of all that I'm going to enjoy the rest of this beautiful late Spring day.
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