John Linton .....and this is made brutally apparent from the moment you arrive back or to visit this country. I arrived back in Australia this morning to be confronted by a customs hall that was full of weary travelers having to queue for 40 minutes to wait for a beagle to sniff your suitcase to see whether you are trying to sneak a piece of fruit or salami or whatever past the dozens and dozens of super diligent customs officers. Strangely countries like the two I have just been to (just like the countries I have visited in the EU or Japan) don't seem to have any such dangers as I've actually never seen any presence of 'customs officers' in any of those countries airports - you simply collect your bag(s) from the carousel and walk straight out to find the transport of your choice. Oh well - I suppose it serves some purpose here that is not necessary in so many other places in the world.
I was glad to eventually get home and receive that welcoming smile and embrace that is, largely, only available between people who are unused to being apart from each other. I was also delighted to receive a boisterous welcome from our very ill, old dog who, albeit briefly, shed his very advanced years and his terrible illness to frolic like the puppy he once was. Unfortunately, for a person who is usually asleep before the aircraft takes off and has to be woken just before it lands, I slept for less than two hours on the nine hour flight home and therefore now feel very jaded as I finally get around to writing today's blog very late in the day. It's the first time I can ever remember not sleeping on any international flight.
My first priorities are to get the plans discussed in Sri Lanka implemented in Australia and to ensure that we make much more rapid progress in 'linking' the SL and the Australian sales efforts and processes. While this will be based primarily on the selling of data links we also need to now put in place the selling of VoIP, Mobile and wireless broadband services. Easy to say and actually, hopefully, easier to now do having put so much effort in to doing all of the required ground work. It will be a very exciting time over the coming months to see whether we can make the more of our ambitious plans become a reality. Over the last 6 or so months we have installed over 100 new business customer VoIP services covering multiple sites of each of the different 'flavours' of our VoIP offering for many different sized companies and our delivery has always been rock solid in every State and Territory - as it is for Exetel itself in both Australia and in Sri Lanka.
VoIP is planned to be one of the key drivers of Exetel's growth this year as, again, it is one of those things that few Australian suppliers can do well and even fewer can do well at a good price and with solid and immediate support. In many ways it is like wireless broadband for corporate users - smaller (and larger) companies can't provide the quality with a 'corporate' offering just being a residential offering with a higher price to the corporate buyer.....and the terribly inconsistent performance because the residential service network appears to be deliberately under provisioned....at least that's the only explanation I can come up with from the tests we have carried out. It will be interesting to see how all these initiatives transpire over the coming weeks.
2011 in Australia will be different.
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