John Linton .....with an even more 'competitive' set of marketplaces.
I managed to catch up on reading the Australian communications media yesterday as jet lag made it difficult to do much else other than drift in and out of sleep for most of the day. It doesn't seem that I missed much while I was away (except perhaps the fact that the rest of Australia caught up with the fact that Kevin Rudd was the biggest mistake of an Australian prime minister ever made who did more damage than Whitlam in a shorter time and I was only disappointed that my prediction that he would be a 'one term aberration' was brought about by Sussex Street rather than an election). I guess it just shows that the Australian electorate remain very slow learners with no ability to understand basic facts about people and political parties.
I also began to look at what changes had occurred in the various markets in which Exetel offers residential ADSL1 and ADSL2 services and it from what my fogged mind could understand it appears that times have become even more 'competitive' over the past three weeks. The (would desperation be too strong a word?) evident in so many changes by so many suppliers appears to have reached a new level with Telstra BigPond leading the way with even more 'incredible' telephone and door knocking 'special offers' than I can remember ever being the case. It seems that Telstra has become the new TPG with an almost ubiquitous 'presence' in making offers of exceptional 'value' to "every" home user around the country and, unlike TPG, at apparent price points that are not only below a company like Exetel's cost but on terms that appear excellent until you get to the fine print.
So I did some calculations on what we may be able to do now that we have dealt with one of the main issues that was preventing us moving forward on ADSL pricing and plans generally but even allowing for the problems of jet lag making thought processes difficult to sustain I could see no clear way forward. I made some progress on 'resuscitating' the 8 mbps offers but the problem remains with that service that even at a reduced cost from Telstra it is still more than double the price of an ADSL2 circuit from Optus or AAPT which renders it useless for any exchange where ADSL2 is available and a poor second choice for the exchanges where Telstra has deployed ADSL2.
The same situation appeared to be the case when I looked at the changes that had happened in the wireless broadband marketplaces - the $A40.00 per month price point being 'attacked' with more down loads than before I went away and with no reason for such a move that I could determine. I was glad to see that one of our first corporate HSPA customers had got approval from their head office to provide Exetel with a testimonial:
http://www.exetel.com.au/corporate-hspa-testimonials.php
and that our progress in providing wireless broadband services to corporate users had increased over the past month with more corporate customers finding the advantages of Exetel's static IPs and back end control and management tools of more use than having to buy 'one off' sims from the carrier's retail outlets.
So, after the inevitable sleep late problem of the first morning in a different time zone I will eventually find my way to the office and do some work again for the first time in three weeks - not a pleasant thought.
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