John Linton
.....one 'last' area in today's communications marketplaces that the bottom feeders can't screw up?
I have no idea of the market size for Business Broadband compared to 'residential' broadband but I don't know anyone in business who doesn't either use a Blackberry or have a data capable mobile handset and also has a wireless broadband capable laptop/notebook. So my rough as guts ball park estimate is something like 600,000 'business' people currently use a mobile wireless service at the moment or something like one third of total wireless broadband users. Of whatever the real number really is I would guess that 70% use Telstra, 15% use Optus and the remaining 15% would be split between Vodafone and 3.
We have spent some time developing a 'business', really 'corporate' wireless broadband offering and will begin marketing this offering in the week before Christmas and then through to the end of January to prepare for a major marketing effort from 1st February through to the end of the financial year. Our objectives are to sell to one thousand 'corporate' customers over that period based on 'an offer that can't be refused' and, much more importantly, an offer that can't be easily copied by the scummier operators in the communications market having re-learned some of the more obvious lessons from our Country Broadband project. AS PTB once allegedly said - "never underestimate the stupidity of the average American" we learned to - "never underestimate the duplicity of the scummy end of the communications reseller operators".
From the 'investigations we have carried out we believe that the main characteristics that business users need (which can't be provided by the bulk resellers of the mobile carrier's retail offerings) include:
1) Fixed IP's for easy VPN implementation
2) 'Fleet' Plans for usage optimisation
3) 'Fleet' control in the company's hands to deal with allocation and re-allocation of devices and sims nd usage control.
4) Lower costs than 'retail' plans "adapted" for 'business' use
5) Engineering support rather than 'shop assistant/residential help desk' support
6) Future price decrease protection
There are undoubtedly other 'labels' that other investigators might use but my view is they are either covered within the six categories listed above or they really aren't relevant - I could be wrong about that but from what we have looked at and investigated with a number of 'successful' business users of wireless broadband and several 'unsuccessful' users the real needs are as described above. (I made reference to some of our investigations in a previous musing. As far as I'm aware none of these characteristics can be met by the Layer 3 bulk resellers) and the few Layer 2 Optus 'partners' would be unprepared to make the pricing available even if they had the desire and ability to sell and support wireless broadband products in the business marketplaces....again I may be wrong but based on what we have looked at to date it seems to be a correct set of assumptions.
When we talked with the ten or so companies that had either bought from us or had bought from Telstra or Optus all of them had bought 'residential' wireless broadband packages from retail stores in the case of Telstra or from 'partners' in the case of Optus, Vodafone and 3. Even our two business customers had bought from our web site at residential rates though they quickly found their way to dealing with us on a person to person basis. I am assuming that the much larger companies (like CBA) bought their services direct from Telstra Corporate but I'm not sure how that operates. We got good information from these investigations and have developed some corporate pricing that is, at least currently, unmatchable in today's published offerings:
http://www.exetel.com.au/corporate-hspa-pricing.php
Apart from the very low pricing, in today's terms, another key component that the new Exetel offerings addresses that was a major point of unhappiness by every one of the corporate users we spoke with is the 'no contract' period. Each one of the people I spoke with while doing this research was 'fed up' (other words were actually used to express their unhappiness) that they had entered in to, mostly, two year contracts and were forced to pay prices that were double or treble what current market prices were. Price protection is a key element of the Exetel business wireless broadband offering....which the various carrier resellers can never address.
I fully realise that you are always most happy with your planning before you actually submit it to the test of marketplace acceptance but, after my errors in the country broadband promotion, I do think I have ensured the lesson learned from that expensive experience has been fully dealt with in developing this new initiative. I guess time will, as always, determine the accuracy of that belief.