John Linton ....signs of slightly greater acceptance.
I was thinking about the 3,000 unit order for wireless services we received a day or so ago and what it may mean beyond the fact that it was easily the largest order we have ever received in the 'history' of our presence as as an Australian communications provider. I must check with Optus to determine whether their corporate business has made a larger unit sale, not for some BS self congratulation rationale, but to determine what sort of other opportunities there are for such business at this point in time in wireless services in Australia. We have made two bids over the past year for 1,000+ numbers of wireless broadband services but, as far as we know, neither of those opportunities ever reached a decision - or maybe they just stopped talking to us.
We are currently bidding to a major bank for over 1.000 ADSL2 services, which while it is unlikely we will be the successful bidder as it seems unlikely that Telstra will not provide some price that is below our buy price (they do that for one off residential customers) but it is interesting that they specifically asked us to bid and we will make a serious effort. We have some quite large business customers for our data link services and one other large customer for our business wireless services and may shortly have several more and we are getting much more interest from larger companies than we did a year ago.
Our new business order values are now approaching the gross value of our new monthly residential orders and have already exceeded the net value of residential orders (after monthly churns and cancellations) which means that our net revenue from business services is closing the 'gap' between residential and business net monthly revenue at a constantly increasing rate. As we develop the revisions to the CY2011 business plan this is something that we need to determine much more accurately. How we approach the business markets from now on will be very, very important to the growth, or otherwise, of Exetel and just how we are able to provide viable residential communication services. If we can be seen as a viable provider of services to more of the 'next tier up' of businesses (the ones whose IT managers currently say "we only deal with "Tier One" carriers) then more orders for 3,000 services at a time will make a big difference to us...not just in business customers but will allow us to continue to provide viable residential services.
The very big difference between our business customers and our residential customers is that in the almost 7 years we have provided business services we have almost never lost a business customer except a very, very few due to them moving premises to a location where we cannot provide services or because of 'financial difficulties'. The reasons for this are several but, clearly, the major reason is that Exetel remains easily the lowest cost provider to the Australian market and yet provides business services that are at least as reliable and consistently fast as any other "premium priced" provider in Australia - bar none. When other suppliers approach our customers their lies and FUD simply don't work because our business customers have a long and consistent track record of Exetel's very low costs, very high reliability, consistently on spec speeds and 'instant' support whenever they have needed it. The unthinking lies dished out by the very low standard "account managers" of our competitors just don't work in those scenarios....they just prove themselves to be what they obviously are - dedicated self abusers.
So while we will not make any provisions in any revised CY2011 business plan for any more very large orders - perhaps it is coming to the time when they will become a reality.
PS: If i ever think I have pricing/competitive problems (which I do constantly) I can at least be grateful that my tiny problems are totally insignificant compared to these sorts of scenarios:
http://www.smh.com.au/business/vodafone-pushes-telstras-buttons-20101116-17vvy.html
Copyright © Exetel Pty Ltd 2010
ABN 350 979 865 46