John Linton It was a more than usually 'incident packed' week with a more varied range of events and issues than usual. - one of general industry interest and others specifically relating to Exetel's business.
In terms of specific interest to Exetel the re-signing of the Telstra contract was significant if only because initially we had intended not to do that. I am still unconvinced that it was the best thing for us to do and certainly my reluctance was born out by the apparent 'elation' our resigning caused in the Telstra Wholesale 'ranks' as evidenced by the cast of thousands invitation to "celebrate the occasion" at one of Sydney's most expensive restaurants. However, from Exetel's viewpoint there are some pluses of which the much wider area to sell business EOC services is probably the main benefit from Exetel's longer term perspective. The lower ADSL2 and 8192 ADSL1 costs are a plus but not meaningful in this extended period of Telstra Retail continuing to offer ADSL services at well below our wholesale buy prices. Whether having the ability to re-sell Telstra's PSTN lines and telephone charges proves of any real benefit to a company that has a very, very high percentage of its residential customers using voip remains to be seen. Then there is the month on month reduction of around $70,000 in TW charges which is a good short term benefit.
I didn't bother to read the multitude of comments on the AFACT/iinet appeal as it's only interest was that it was a split decision which, almost certainly, you would think, will result in a further appeal and the likelihood of some High Court generated 'legislation' that might actually address the major issue of the, incredibly ineptly run, original law suit - that ISPs are conspiring to return Australia to its original situation where the majority of its population are criminals and where every Australian is encouraged to steal from the age at which they are able to use the internet with all of the devastating consequences that will have on an already lawless society. For those 'people' who are unable to understand that concept try brushing up on what is happening in terms of copyright law in the EU among other places. On balance, if I were AFACT I would be feeling a lot happier at the conclusion of the appeal than at the conclusion of the dog's breakfast of a case run by their inept legal 'team' and would be viewing the future much more brightly:
http://www.smh.com.au/technology/technology-news/net-pirate-ruling-may-force-isps-to-cut-off-cheats-20110301-1bcr4.html
The 'back to the future' method of providing services to residential uses via approaching employers resulted in the first four Exetel business users signing up to provide discounted ADSL1 and ADSL2 services to their employees. This was remarkable in that it took less than 24 hours from the sending out of the email advices to our business customers for this to happen - which, I have to say, really surprised me - positively of course. I won't repeat what I said yesterday but sometimes the 'old ways are the best ways' and they never have been improved upon. It will be interesting to see what transpires over the coming months.....and we will now return to the 7 years ago method of 'offering' residential ADSL services more widely.
The voip sales and technical training in Colombo is, reportedly from several sources, going well with the first voip business sales made by Sri Lankan outbound sales personnel - "imminent".....which is the only real test of the effectiveness of any sales training. The next week's training will be interesting based on hands on coaching and refining of the sales methodologies and changes to the web site and sales and technical documentation. In the initial planning late last year the sales of voip services to business users was going to be done from North Sydney but since Clarissa's first training of SL personnel last November it has become obvious that this, and other outbound sales programs, are far better done from Colombo. Again, it will be interesting to see how this works out.
Late in the week (Friday) we finally completed the discussions with Optus to allow us to offer their retail wireless broadband services which will allow Exetel to provide 'standard' wireless broadband services at far lower prices that our 'premium' services are priced. Our value add to the 'standard' services will be that we will reduce the monthly price by forgoing our wholesale commission and therefore reducing the cost to the customer quite substantially. I think a wireless broadband service for $25.00 a month for 5 gb of data will be very attractive to low volume ADSL users - time will tell if that's a correct assumption.
Perhaps as can possibly be seen from the few examples I have given above a lot of quite positive progress is being made by Exetel and possibly the peripheral outside activities that have some influences on Exetel. For whatever reason(s) I feel generally more relaxed about the first half of 2011 than I have done for some months.
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