John Linton I'll look a bit of of a ****head.....or so this and other statements in the public domain seem to mean:
http://www.itwire.com/your-it-news/home-it/42700-internodes-better-50gb-deal-take-that-telstra?start=1
If I'm reading this, and other statements made by the CEO of Internode, correctly his 'negotiating' and public whining has allowed Internode to "force" Telstra Wholesale to reduce the prices at which it sells ADSL2 services to Internode. This has resulted in Internode now being able to offer Telstra ADSL2 services at far higher prices that Exetel already sells the same services. Exetel hasn't had to "huff and puff" either directly to Telstra, the ACCC or make whining comments about Telstra Wholesale in the public domain - nor has any other Telstra Wholesale customer as far as I have noticed. I wonder whether Internode gets better prices from TW than Exetel does? I will never know but, based on their "just released, new, lower" prices it doesn't look like it.....but then.....
.....These are very tough times and it appears from the 'carry on' that Internode have been indulging in that their business is not going as smoothly as they believe it is their right to operate under in all phases of all markets at all times. It is one of the more obvious 'public' signs that ISPs in Australia are not finding the current market conditions to their liking. TPG's continual 'price cuts' are another of the more obvious signs and the closing of iinet's corporate mouth is another. But you would have had to have been truly stupid not to have realised that Telstra Retail's frantic give aways over the past year or so to "regain market share" would have resulted in exactly what is now happening and that Telstra's CEO's statement that they would be spending an additional billion dollars on "regaining market share" would only make Australian ISPs think of the previous twelve months as "the good old days".
We had one of our periodic meetings with Telstra yesterday (no "huffing and puffing" - just the sensible business discussion as to how/if we could do more business with each other at our low volumes) but the usual 'frank exchange of views' on our behalf. One of the things that we discussed, me bluntly - TW carefully, was there any long term future for Telstra to operate a wholesale business at all? In a future world of 'NBN2' what place was there for a 'sub-wholesaler' when Telstra had to buy residential services from a government monopoly that, by definition, was going to have to operate a true wholesale business based on true wholesale tiered pricing? Of course there was no view other than the expected conventional comments by TW on this issue - there couldn't have been otherwise - but the issue is very real in the future and not just for Telstra Wholesale. The same issues would affect Optus Wholesale in terms of residential wired/fibred services and any smaller company that aspired to wholesale residential services.
I made the blatantly obvious point that when a wholesaler (such as Telstra) announces that it is prepared to forgo a billion dollars of profit in one financial year to "win back market share" what is that expressing for its belief that wholesale customers play any part in its future? By the way I'm not, for one moment, expressing the view that wholesale should not play any part in Telstra's 'NBN2' future but the federal government has committed itself to becoming the 'new Telstra' as far as residential services are concerned; and maybe as far as SME services are concerned. I don't think it would be very sensible for Exetel to plan on any wholesale future with Telstra at a residential or SME level but then my thinking is seldom even tangentially similar to 'main stream' thinking in this industry. We wil look at TW's new proposals regarding various services positively (as we always do for any supplier) and hopefully their interests and our interests will coincide well enough for positive outcomes to be achieved on several 'fronts'.
What is very clear to me is that 'support' (in new meanings of that word) is going to be far more important in a government dominated communications industry than it ever has been in the past. It maybe fortunate for our small company that we began planning and implementing for that four years ago.....or maybe that was just happenstance rather than foresight.
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