John Linton .....one of the more difficult months in Exetel's short 'life'.
With a day to go we have hit 8 out of 10 of our 'product revenue targets' and we expect to meet the very tough business link sales, 70 new services, target later today. We have already met all our 'financial' targets (though we didn't reach $A5 million revenue for the month) so its been a good month in those respects but it has been quite a difficult month in almost every other respect as we begin to move the company from the direction it has followed since January 4th 2004 to not providing 'the most for the least' for the high download part of the ADSL2 and ADSL1 market sectors and continue the move to providing different services to residential markets generally. 'Habit' is hard to break whether by an individual or by a commercial entity and even being an integral part of the planning for these changes - I find it as hard as anyone else withiin Exetel.
I spoke for quite some considerable time yesterday to a 'party' who called me 'out of the blue' to determine Exetel's interest in buying his company's business user base which was overwhelmingly SHDSL and wire line telephony customers. As always with such transactions the price being asked was much higher than we would be prepared, or could afford, to pay but we had an amicable discussion for 30 minutes or so having become acquainted at one of those 'get to know you' events organised by a big accounting firm some three years ago. Apart from thinking this was the right time for him and his two partners to get out of 'the business' he could see what is obvious to anyone in this part of the business/market - that SHDSL was a difficult technology to keep selling where Ethernet was available and his wholesale supplier had yet to provide a sensibly priced alternative...though as I pointed out to him he could always approach AAPT - which for some reason he said they had not thought of doing....presumably there were reasons for that he did not wish to talk about. It was a useful chat because you don't often get the chance of discussing issues with people who do pretty much the same as you do.
He said the reason he had called me was that his company had lost 'a few customers' to Exetel recently and he couldn't believe the prices we were charging. He, like so many other suppliers with long term SHDSL revenues was still charging nearly $A1,000 a month for a 2mbps/2mbps service and had become reliant on the gigantic profits from those sort of prices and found it difficult to understand that a 10mbps/10mbps service was being sold for $A700.00 per month - and was also horrified that there was a zero install cost for such a service where he was used to install fees North of $A2,500. When you look at it like that it's a pretty bleak 'picture'. I give him a contact at AAPT to approach to see what he could get in terms of the sort of pricing that would allow him to compete but I think the problem may well be that he couldn't comfortably exist with the huge revenue reductions (and even larger profit reductions) selling Ethernet services would involve.
It occurred to me after we finished the conversation that his problem would be quite common across the providers who have a largish SHDSL customer base and that Telstra's newly announced pricing for the Hatteras based solution would have encouraged the majority of those suppliers to believe that they would be able to make a 'smooth' transition from their current SHDSL pricing to new Ethernet pricing while maintaining their customer base at their current rip off pricing levels. Undoubtedly that will be 'the plan' for a large number of these providers and doubtless many of those providers who don't bother to look at alternatives will be very happy to get more speed for the same price never realising that they are spending double, or more, what they should be paying.
I just hope we can find a thousand or so business users over the coming twelve months who will look around before re-signing with their current rip off provider.
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