John Linton .....who ignores the blindingly obvious even when a scenario can only be caused by one situation.
Exetel has struggled to build a sensible wireless broadband business for a month or so short of two years now. We have certainly built a realistic and surprisingly stable residential customer base and have continued to slowly build an even more stable business customer base. Throughout that time we have struggled to match, let alone surpass, the pricing/bandwidth offers of any of the carriers or even their larger resellers. This has reached a point where we have considered abandoning the investments in time and money we have put into wireless and simply left it to the people who can offer so much for so little.....something we simply can't do and haven't been able to do since 'day one'.
I actually reached the point where my metaphorical 'pen' was hovering over the metaphorical 'paper' on which I was going to advise our provider that we would cease promoting the service to residential users completely and only provide wireless broadband to business users. My reason for not ceasing to promote the wireless service to business users was that there are several business users (including a long term personal acquaintance) who all make the same comment - "Exetel's Optus wireless service is so much faster with zero drop outs than other "Optus Wireless" services they have tried from Virgin, Dodo, Internode and Optus themselves. I have found this to be true over the past year or so and have even confirmed this "strange phenomenon" with the Optus manager responsible for the wholesale wireless service. This "phenomenon" manifests itself in a simple way. Put an Exetel "Optus" laptop next to an "Optus/Virgin/Dodo/Internode Laptop and do a speed test of the 'other' user's choice and compare the results. The Exetel "Optus" service will deliver a much faster result than any of the other four "Optus" wireless services - using the same source data from the same tower/cell from the same location at the identical time.
Over the past eighteen months I have conducted this test some 8 - 10 times and the result is always the same.
If I had been conducting the same test on two ADSL services (which of course would been logistically impossible) the answer would have been immediately apparent to me as I am sure it is to any reader of these scribblings. However, until yesterday it wasn't obvious to me concerning the HSPA speed test comparisons and I just shrugged my shoulders and was grateful enough to pick up some extra business in the cases where that transpired. In the meanwhile I just plodded on shaking my head at why all Exetel's competitors could offer so much more than we could even when we sold the service at 'cost'. Until yesterday I never did find an answer to this scenario although each time I saw a comparison of two services side by side producing such difference in download speeds (if you do the test in the early evening between 7 pm and 8 pm it is almost 4:1 in Exetel's favour) the answer should have been obvious - unless you are a totally naive fool I suppose.
So, what to do?
Have an Ethicsectomy? Pretend I come from a different country and parental and education background? Get out of the communications industry? Do what "everyone else does" and feel perpetually nauseous? Give up?
Food for thought over the weekend. The very least that can be done is to not go down the ethicsless path of "everyone else" but to change our contract to allow us to use the currently totally unused midnight to 8 am - 10 am - 12 noon periods as we do with ADSL to provide 'free downloads' of some magnitude.......1:1, 1:2 or even perhaps 1:3.
We will have to consider the implications of the apparently ethicsless actions of our competitors and maybe we should go down that apparently universally trodden path - and corner the market in Dramamine supplies. If it is in fact true then it would explain why so many wireless broadband users have such a low opinion of wireless broadband that I always struggle to understand as my experience is always so different. It seems lack of ethics can trash a whole technology's reputation in a country.
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