John Linton .....would still be alive and well ten years in to the 21st Century?
Well, contrary to the date published on the web site and a verbal confirmation from the ABS itself mid yesterday morning, the latest ABS figures on broadband take up will now not be available until next Monday. While a week doesn't matter much it was disappointing because we would have liked an update on the progress of wireless broadband before making any final decisions on just how we might change our current wireless broadband offerings - but another delay in that long drawn out process is not going to jeopardise anything in particular other than losing slightly more 'momentum' than we already have.
I will be interested to see the latest ABS figures for other reasons such as whether there has been any growth in the reported number of ADSL services - I stress the 'reported' aspect of that sentence because there must always be doubts about the accuracy of 'self reporting' of the base data which I doubt is done as accurately by at least some of the companies as it is by Exetel. However I have always assumed it was a very good indications of trends if not a very accurate indication of overall market size which I think it has always 'over reported' - perhaps that's too cynical a view.
The 'trend' that becomes more evident each day in terms of the ADSL market is that Telstra now accounts for almost 100% of the churn aways we experience. - there are more days when all the churn aways are to Telstra which is something I wouldn't have believed possible only a few months ago. Perhaps equally surprisingly is that there are almost no churn aways to TPG which used to comprise around 50% of churn aways every day only 8 or so weeks ago but now, as if a tap was turned off, are very rare with only one or two every day or so. I have no idea as to what other ISPs are experiencing but I doubt that Exetel has any particularly unique characteristics that would make our experiences so different.
When we call the 'departing' customers they don't seem to have any distinct reasons for moving from Exetel to Telstra. Hard though it is to believe the only discernible reason is that they "want all services on one bill". No-one has said they did it to reduce their spending and only one or two said it was because they were unhappy with the quality of the service provided. We will have to do a far more rigorous check on 'departure' reasons because I just don't understand what I have seen so far. Perhaps the 'one bill' nonsense has more impact than I have ever given it credit for.
I have always resisted the temptation to add to Exetel's revenue by offering telephone line rental as there was no value we could add to the provision of such a service and we certainly couldn't save the end user any money. I understand that many other providers don't share my view and, if the analysis of Telstra's acquisitions of Exetel customers proves out the QAD analysis we have done so far, maybe they have a more correct view of the residential market places than I ever have - not very hard to believe. It is far too late in the 'day' to think about offering telephone line rental now - it would, apart from anything else, be far to cynical for a company that only uses VoIP in its own operations and believes so firmly in the future of wireless to recommend a dead/dying technology to any type of customer....but the 'analysis' done so far has really surprised me.
I wonder what other 'discredited' concepts will come back or simply re-surface to make decisions even harder than they are at the moment?
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