John Linton .....and only 'believed' by "morons"?
We spent most of yesterday seeing what could possibly be done to improve our wireless broadband and mobile telephony plans/services. We have limited options because of our size and also because of our basis of being in business which means we already sell every service at very little profit at any point in time. Our other consideration is do we change from Vodafone whom we have used since we began offering mobile telephony to Optus after all these years. No decision is ever easy and, right now, decisions are harder than they have ever been as far as I can remember.
If I was to believe what I am told about data and voice call margins being achieved by suppliers I would be happy enough to accept that Exetel should give up trying to provide wireless broadband services and leave that very important aspect of communications services to 'the big providers'. However I don't believe what I am being told and 'the big companies' really annoy me with their, to me, basically fraudulent advertising. I realise that it is entirely my own personal perception problem and it also almost certainly means that I should no longer be attempting to play any part in the Australian communications business. However, right now, I have no real options so I get to spend frustrating days like yesterday.
By the end of yesterday we had made little progress on developing any significant new mobile plans that, assuming potential buyers had enough mental acuity they would see any advantage in what a company like Exetel could offer. It would be an exaggeration to say that I felt physically ill in looking at current mobile plans being offered by major suppliers but I was certainly mentally 'distressed' at what "large" providers thought of their potential customers as implied by the outright lies spread across their web sites. Are people REALLY that stupid? Of course they must be - otherwise the web sites wouldn't contain the arrant nonsense they are now filled with. So a very depressing day.
On the wireless broadband tasks we made a little better progress and are thinking of a more adventurous peak/off peak set of plans based on an obvious usage pattern by our current wireless broadband users. Optus have recently introduced a set of peak/off peak plans which are attractive enough in their way but are pretty 'pedestrian' as far as a 'typical' wireless broadband user is concerned. We looked at what it may now be possible for us to do and looked at our current user's usage patterns and found what, until it's copied, may be a uniquely appealing scenario for our own customer base and the sorts of customers who are attracted to Exetel rather than the many other larger providers.
We are thinking of offering an 18 hour off peak period with either a 1:1 or even a 1:2 allowance (i.e. 1 gb peak plus 1 gb off peak or perhaps 2 gb off peak etc) for the current cost of offering the same 'peak' downloads for 24 hours. This would give something like:
1/1 - $17.50
2/2 - $25.00
3/3 - $35.00
etc; with an off peak period of 19 hours from 11 pm to 6pm and excess usage at something between $3.00 and $15.00 per gb.
We figured such plans would not only address the ADSL replacement sector of the marketplace but would be very appealing to business users. However we would expect the concept, if it does actually work the way we think it will, would be very quickly copied by the usual idea bereft people and any advantage it gave us would not last very long so we need something else that will not be so easily copied. What that could be I have no idea and I eventually gave up trying and went to bed.
So a fresh day and a fresh start - maybe we'll have more inspiration this morning and make some decisions that will help us stay in the wireless broadband and mobile telephony 'markets'.
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