John Linton
.........and is shuffling closer together seeking mutual protection....or that's how it seems to me.
I'm not sure what has caused it but I am receiving more 'unsolicited' contacts from people in other related businesses than usual over the past few weeks. Some of them are simply exploring 'business opportunities' but a fair proportion are people wanting to talk about things as diverse as the TIO, The 'NBN2', Telstra pricing, how/why Exetel took action against Telstra, buying IP and other services from Exetel and, most strangely, would we sell our automated provisioning and support systems. I imagine more 'approachable' people in the industry than I have ever chosen to be make and receive these sorts of contacts all the time but I rarely receive them - I regard all such people as competitors and therefore would do nothing to assist them in any way at all.
There were so many over such a short space of time that it probably means 'something'. I put it down to these very uncertain and very tough times that make almost every day some sort of new 'challenge' and after a succession of them produces a form of 'punch drunk' exhaustion in terms of dealing with 'surprise' issues. I attended my eldest son's engagement party last night and I spoke with a couple of 'industry people who in passing alluded to times being tough but I didn't pursue the comments partly because of the occasion but mainly because of the noise level that made it difficult to hear what anyone with whom you were conversing was saying. I actually feel less 'pressure' over the past week than at any time this calendar year - I'm not sure that was because of the general happiness of the upcoming event or that there were less 'challenges' over the past seven days.
Perhaps its this general feeling of well being that brought me to the conclusion earlier this morning to go ahead with signing both the Telstra Wholesale Point Cook trial agreement and the NBN2 Tasmanian agreement without any changes to the suggested drafts provided by the suppliers and to go ahead and finalise the pricing for the Opticomm sites in NSW, Victoria and Queensland. I realise that all of these 'opportunities' combined only cover a tiny percentage of the current ADSL marketplaces but "it's a symbolic" start to some sort of new era as one overblown piece of PR described it - which will not see the light of day.
We have been looking for a differentiator to the dreariness that has become the ADSL pricing offers across all suppliers and see the start of fibre based services to turn back the clock to honesty and sanity, and even, common sense, that has been so completely lost by ADSL being priced according to the original Telstra model that has been copied, and copied, and copied by every other carrier and reseller since 2001. The concept of an access price plus an included down load allowance plus throttling/pay per mb over those allowances was always stupidly over complicated and was only done, and then maintained for the last ten years, because Telstra (followed by every one else) wholesale pricing was structured that way.
It's long past time for a change and an end to all the lying and obfuscation that is ADSL pricing today - getting as bad as mobile pricing - designed to gut the stupid.
I need someone with a keener mind than I have to run the figures a few more times before we make any final decision on the actual price per gigabyte but I think fibre needs some radical new, sensible, not con the stupid methodology and the one I personally favour is zero install, zero monthly access charge and $1.00 per gb down loaded plus the cost of any termination hardware that is needed as a one off purchase.
Maybe it was the thought of being able to see a way out of the current pricing models we have to put in place that has caused this haze of cheerfulness?
PS: More people publicly agree with the bleeding obvious I wrote about when it happened:
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/business/opinion/dumping-ets-was-sensible-will-rudd-now-ditch-nbn-as-well/story-e6frg9if-1225860817798
Copyright © Exetel Pty Ltd 2010
ABN 350 979 865 46