John Linton Life seems to be continuing to be getting more complicated and time demands imposed by 'out of left field' incidents, events and just plain threats seem to be increasing. I can usually deal with my daily comms industry 'reading, over night email and other start of day business tasks in a little over an hour before writing this blog over a second cup of tea or coffee but since I returned from the annual break that time has become closer to two hours - sometimes more than that. Perhaps it's just my ongoing inability to understand what is happening around Australia?
I read the reports on the coalition's alternative to Labor's mythical 'NBN2' yesterday and again early this morning and I was struck by the arrant stupidity of the Australian communications media and the even greater stupidity of those members of the Australian electorate who managed to get their inane comments in to print. I have no intention of wasting your time reading a rehash of my statements over the past almost three years since Krudd announced 'his' national broadband policy in late 2007 (the one that would deliver fast broadband to 99% of Australia's population with the first houses turned on by December 2008 for a total cost of some $A5 billion. (funnily enough I didn't see any comments about that).
What I did read were comments by 'experts' (mainly Australian communication media children) that started from the assumption that Krudd's 'NBN2' was somehow a rational reality and the coalition were insane to propose that it wasn't. Since when did a flagrant political face saving farce become "a reality"? Never mind - Australian's (like Americans and Brits) get the governments they deserve and the socialistic cargo cult mentalities prevalent in such a large percentage of those people are the preferred life style belief of the stupid and the lazy. In the mean time we have to run a business in today's world and try to deal with the constant uncertainty that engenders.
Telstra's recent 'updates' to its ADSL2 plans and its $A200 or so 'welcome back' incentives have shaken up the market, as was obviously intended, and the first reactions are beginning to be seen. It is going to be really interesting to see how much market share Telstra is able to 'buy back' over the balance of calendar 2010 and just how much damage that does to the larger ISPs - I think the damage to smaller ISPs, particularly in country/regional areas of Australia will be immense (I think the damage to Exetel will be pretty hard to deal with too by the way but at least we knew it was coming and made what preparations we could). It isn't hard to work out who the biggest loser will be from the current Telstra initiatives (iinet) but it will be interesting to see which other companies are affected and by how much.
Naturally, we only have a passing and mild interest in how other companies prosper or don't prosper as it takes all of the time we have available to deal with our own problems....and there are more of those these days than at any time in the past; or so it seems. Sometime over the next day or so we need to finalise what we will do in terms of offering ADSL2 services via the Telstra ADSL2 network. While we have pretty much established the limits of what is possible we were hoping to see what other ISPs were going to do before finalising the 'line up'. Looking at the information currently available there will be a mixture of competitive 're-adjustments' even from the people who publicly stated that they wouldn't "sell at below cost" because of "Telstra's anti-competitive actions". So much for pomp and circumstance - it obviously hasn't taken long for churn aways to change that pretty silly statement.
We also need to provide new wireless broadband plans before the end of August and that is now becoming more interesting than any time in the past. While everyone (within the industry) I talk with remains adamant that "wireless will never replace ADSL/fibre) I think that adamancy is about to be tested for the first time. Optus recent wireless plans address have become much closer to what 50% of current ADSL users are prepared to pay for an internet connection and the network infrastructures are getting a little closer to being able to sustain the performance required in a lot more places than even a year ago. The hardware required is a fraction of the price it was and most of it can be bought on places like E Bay for a big discount off even the carrier's discounted new price. 50% of Exetel's customers use less than 5 gb per month (most of those use less than 3 gb per month) and the price/speed/sustainability equation continues to become more compelling for that large section of our customer base. Only price has been the barrier and that may become less of an issue over the coming months.
It seems to me that between now and Christmas the internet marketplace in Australia will change more than it has done since 'broadband' emerged and killed the dial up market place within two years.
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