John Linton The 'court' season is rapidly drawing to a close with little progress having been made over the past 9 or so months on two of the three pieces of litigation we initiated in January of this year. We did receive the cheque from Telstra Retail for our expenses in having to take them to court to get them to publish an apology for defamation which was some compensation for their ridiculous actions but the second dispute (with Telstra Wholesale) continues to drag on as does the dispute with the TIO. Both are listed for hearings but even now the TIO is trying to avoid facing up to the consequences of it not adhering to its own constitution. With the courts set to close in December for the 'Christmas break' both those disputes will reach there first anniversary with virtually nothing productive having been achieved.
Litigation is one of the least productive and most frustrating areas of 'business life'. However Telstra has, over the decades that I have been aware of its nature, made almost an art form of using delays in legal process to attempt to exhaust the patience (and the cash resources) of anyone who disputes anything about the way Telstra operates....even when it's clearly obvious as in our settled dispute with them that they were clearly in the wrong. I knew that before we decided that we had no option, after months of producing this and that paperwork and meetings that got absolutely nowhere, but to try the court system. So a year will pas soon with only the most blatantly obvious and clear cut 'wrong doing' resolved and paid for by the offending party. I wouldn't hold out too much hope that these two issues will be resolved in any estimate of a near future. So we will not be able to 'tidy up' those two issues before the end of this calendar year.
We will be able to finalise the submission of the Australian company's tax and other statutory returns which only needs the sign off by our auditors having gone through the endless adjustments required by our taxation accountants who seem never to be in any hurry until our 'submission date' becomes imminent. We completed the Sri Lankan company's statutory returns while we were in Colombo a month or so ago which are made easier because of out tax exempt status as a start up company under that country's protocols for attracting outside investment and job creation. So we have no real outstanding accounting issues for either company.
Our major operational 'loose end' is to determine what we do about floor space for the new year. I am not a pessimistic person by any means but the state of the various actions by the different suppliers to the residential communications marketplaces does confuse me as to how long it will continue for and where it will actually end up. My concern isn't so much where that will leave Exetel in terms of providing services to residential users so much as how confident we can be in making the 'monetary' transition from revenue mainly from residential services to revenue mainly from business and corporate services. 'Investing' in something as non-productive as floor space sits very oddly in such circumstances.
The major 'clean up' activity that will occupy as many hours as can be made available for it is the review and changes to both company's operating and business plans for the first six months of 2011. We have always managed to complete business planning tasks on time (you don't really have any option) but the quality of the work is obviously variable depending on the thoughtfulness and care put into the reviews. Anybody can produce a spread sheet with some text.......
....then of course there's the simple matter of ensuring we reach our already planned November and December numbers.....probably not going to be much time available for Christmas shopping and get togethers.
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