Thursday, March 31. 2011March Has Been A Good Month For ExetelJohn Linton The month has only a day to go but it has already set a new record in terms of the 'value' of new sales revenue generated - which is pleasing to everyone concerned in those processes. The next two months of any sales year to date are always the best, by quite a margin, for communications services sales just as they are for hardware technology sales. It's a combination of commercial budget cycles and the concomitant communication service contract renewal dates but it was clearly demonstrated by our March sales hitting new records. The month was very good in several other ways including 5 of our 6 new trainees making at least one sale in their first month (the 6th has only been with us for 5 working days - but as of 10am this morning she has also made her first sale). The sales teams in Sri Lanka are also coming to grips with their new, much more demanding targets and each one of those different campaigns is now making progress. We will activate our new Auckland PoP tomorrow, assuming everything goes to plan. This is our first 'venture' in expanding our 'commercial' network beyond Australia and it will be the 'test case' for determining how quickly/whether we proceed with putting PoPs into Chicago and London before the end of this year. We obviously already have a PoP in Colombo but we are prohibited from using that infrastructure for anything but our own services by our agreement with the SL board of investment under which we were allowed to set up a company in Sri Lanka. We will attempt to get that restriction removed in the near future having more than fulfilled our initial contracted obligations. This would allow us to approach Australian and other international companies operating in Colombo to provide them with data and voice services. The new PoPs in Sydney and Melbourne are now fully operational and we will establish a schedule to add a second PoP in Brisbane once the Auckland PoP is operational. We have also signed the lease to take up a new floor in our North Sydney building and work will commence on fitting out that floor space next week. We hope to complete the 'negotiations' to acquire the balance of the floor space on the floor we occupy in Colombo when Annette and I go to Sri Lanka next week to do the quarterly business and personnel reviews. Apart from allowing for a continuing growth in personnel in North Sydney (should the current growth estimates be met) the objective of acquiring more space in North Sydney is to allow us to double the current data centre floor space to allow us to offer 'hosting solutions' for the increasing number of our current business customers asking for such services. I am not 100% convinced that this is a direction we should take but if the 'evidence' is compelling enough then I can see why it is sensible to consider it. The future remains uncertain with changes continuing at a seemingly daily rate across many aspects of the communications industry - and other industries of which we have some knowledge. This is most noticeable in terms of the changes in personnel within our wholesale suppliers where the changes all seem to be part of reductions in overall personnel numbers. It's also noticeable in changes of 'direction' within both our suppliers and our competitors which we can 'measure' by the number of unsolicited approaches we get from people exploring the possibility of employment with Exetel and, as I have mentioned previously, the increased number of approaches to either buy Exetel or operate some sort of joint venture. We have started our planning for FY2012 a few days earlier than usual and the current uncertainties and rates of change that are already happening is making those tasks harder than in the past.....though I don't really ever remember them as being easy. So it was good to have had a very busy and very productive March which will end with a number of 'record' achievements.....and even though it doesn't provide any future certainty it has probably been a better month than most companies in our industry have experienced. Copyright © Exetel Pty Ltd 2011
Wednesday, March 30. 2011The Future Of Telecommunications Wholesalers?John Linton Exetel spends over $A4 million a month with three major wholesale telecommunications companies each month (Optus, Telstra and AAPT) on a variety of services including ADSL ports and back hauls (the largest spend), wireless broadband, wireline minutes and mobile services plus IP. We are not any of those companies largest customer, by any means, but we have been good customers for more than seven years in that we pay our bills and our business volumes steadily increase. It will be interesting to see the impact of the 'NBN2' on these, and other companies, wholesale business when/if the 'NBN2' services become deliverable in a realistic number of locations. The comments reported here: http://www.zdnet.com.au/optus-to-offer-nbn-wholesale-services-339312211.htm are some indication of what Optus intentions are but it's going to be a difficult 'sell' I would have thought if, in fact, the 'NBN2' is going to be forced to sell access at the same price to every buyer irrespective of volume - in theory the only way that it could make any difference to the current monopoly situations. Where does that leave a 're-wholesaler'? The value add is reduced to a better priced connection to the 'NBN2' hand off points than the smaller ISP could procure for themselves and, depending on what transpires, additional 'content' that an Optus can provide that the smaller ISP couldn't. Not an easy solution for Optus/Telstra to put in place - at least as far as I can see. Vicki Brady mentions that Optus was glad that the 'NBN2' (presumably via lobbying from Telstra/Optus et al) had expanded the number of POIs from the twelve favoured by the 'NBN2' to 121 favoured by the large carriers. Without this there would be absolutely no 're-wholesaling' as, doubtless, smaller ISPs (like Exetel) would have simply installed their own POI interconnects in the major capital cities and would have had access to 100% of the 'NBN2' coverage without paying premiums to a third party. Having said that - it may still be the case as smaller companies have no need, nor ambition, to provide fibre services to 100% of the 'NBN2' foot print by paying premiums to a third party and the 80% of the market within the five mainland capital cities is more than enough for any company to 'aim at'. In general terms the wholesale customers for the three large carriers would appear to be continuing to shrink in terms of wire line based services though that decline, presumably, is being offset by the ever more rapidly growing mobile usage in every marketplace. One thing I have noticed over the last two years is the increase in the number of approaches Exetel has received from companies wishing to buy internet and other services from Exetel on a 're-wholesale' basis. Mostly very small companies but lately companies of surprising size. We have been developing the capabilities of providing quite sophisticated facilities to visps almost since we commenced the Exetel Agent Program in mid 2004 and now offer much better back end services to visps than our main carrier suppliers offer to us. In fact, right now, our current visp customers probably get better value add from Exetel than they can get from anyone else - if that continues to be the case it will be interesting to see what happens when the PSTN starts getting de-commissioned. I think wholesale business within the carriers we buy from is a pretty tough ask at the moment and, despite Vicki Brady's brave words it seems to me that it will only get harder and will continue to be more rapidly dependent on growth in mobile services. I think we have to deal with some pretty demanding problems but I think the 'NBN2' is claiming its first major 'victims' before its delivered a single byte of data. Copyright © Exetel Pty Ltd 2011 Tuesday, March 29. 2011Reading The Latest 'NBN2' Legislation Reports......John Linton .......casts a widening and darkening shadow over the future of communications in Australia and demonstrates the foolishness of minority governments in thrall to idiotic, parochial vested interests. Looking in to the future of the Australian communications industry has become progressively more difficult since Krudd's delusions were escalated via his cover up of his election promise lies (remember in September 2007 he promised to build a nation wide fibre network at a cost of $4.7 billion dollars?). Of course he was simply taking advantage of the fact that the electorate, particularly the people voting for the first time, are so stupid they will fall for almost anything....and most of the rest are, well, just stupid. So, courtesy of a stupid electorate and a lying Labor Party the actual future of large parts of the Australian communications industry is far more difficult for companies like Exetel to understand. Political chicanery has made a massive impact on some very serious aspects of how this country will 'operate' over the coming ten years and this time lying politicians have done something particularly stupid rather than their usual nonsensical promises about taxes or hand outs. The only certain things about federal government projects are that they will cost more than announced, they will be delivered far later than promised and they won't produce the services defined as the end objective. Nothing has changed since Federation and therefore no one is particularly alarmed at yet another political waste of tax payers dollars - but the 'NBN2' is a completely different pan of pisces to the usual pissing away of taxpayer money on idiocies like billion dollar jet fighters, unnecessary submarines that if there was an actual conflict are so noisy and crewed so ineptly they would have a 'battle life' of a fraction of a second or the rest of the bribery defined wastes of money that plague this, and many other, "democracies". This time political egoism, on a gigantic scale, has resulted in plans to scrap the current Australian communications infrastructure delivered by a recently privatised ex-government monopoly and replace parts of it with a communications infrastructure operated by a new government monopoly. How bad can that be - really? Well if you listen to the cacophony of ill informed, juvenile support for this mis-adventure it will be a plus compared to what currently exists. Maybe it will - but you really do have to wonder why, if an 'NBN2' is really such a clear cut obvious better service than what currently exists, it can only 'work' if the "obsolete and completely inadequate service" that delivers communications services today has to be ripped out to make the 'NBN2' viable.....particularly as that "obsolete and completely inadequate service" was sold off to the public for something like $30 billion dollars very recently. I have spent some time looking at what the 'NBN2' really might mean to the vast majority of real people in Australia. From what I read on the public record I can see nothing of benefit (even ignoring the pissing away of more tens of billions of dollars of taxpayer money that isn't really relevant in terms of Labor governments as they would have pissed it away anyway on military stupidity or their other crazy schemes) being 'delivered via the 'NBN2' waste of money. I can't get past what any monopoly results in - prices increase and services decline. That cannot be argued with because in the history of what is laughingly referred to as 'the civilised world' NO monopoly has ever delivered anything better or at a lower cost than competing private enterprises do....that's why ALL private enterprises do their very best to kill off their competitors so they can gouge the huge profits that only a monopoly can generate. But in the case of the 'NBN2' its much worse than the usual government monopoly. This instance is created by an egomaniac with zero knowledge of something as vital as nationwide telecommunications and is being continued on by a doctrinaire nincompoop who only sees one thing as being important in her life - extending the time she can pretend to be prime minister of Australia. In the mean time massive changes are underway across the depth and breadth of the Australian telecommunications delivery structures which no-one, at least no-one who cares to put their views on the public record, seems capable of understanding. If you actually look at what is in train at the moment all you will see is that the cost of current data and telephone services is going to increase, and will keep increasing, the quality of those services will be below what is currently being delivered and will decline over time and there will be no improvement to those services (quite the reverse) from the moment the 'NBN2' is turned on. Copyright © Exetel Pty Ltd 2011 Monday, March 28. 2011What Will The Australian Communications Business Look Like....John Linton .....in 2018?.......based on what is currently known about mainstream technologies and government ambition? Using the word "known" in those contexts is probably unwise. The main agenda for the week for Exetel is to complete the work started last week (though in truth it is a continuing and never ending task) on trying to find a 'new' or 'better' way of offering residential ADSL services. I am progressively excluding myself from these tasks as I have progressively less to contribute and, quite frankly, I find the demands of trying to figure out what is happening at the moment, let alone what will happen in the near future, progressively more difficult. Perhaps it's because too many large ISPs now pretend to offer services that they have absolutely no intention of delivering and the lies, overt and covert, that appear on far too many ISP web sites are just too difficult to deal with but the ADSL buying public, just like the Labor voting NSW electorate over the past 16 years, despite the evidence of their own eyes, continue to 'buy' the lies.....and with that sort of view it is not possible for me to meaningfully participate in defining residential ADSL plans. I am going to use my time this week in making an early start on next years business plan by developing the aims and ambitions for Exetel in the context of the coming seven years - which seven years ago would have been a complete nonsense and that may still be the case. My 'defence' for thinking about such an approach is that all the assumptions we, principally me, made seven years ago have all proven to be totally wrong. The corollary is that had those (principally my) assumptions not been so wrong then Exetel would be a much different, and almost certainly a much better company than it is today. It would certainly have been far less demanding to operate over the past seven years. So, while I realise that it isn't possible to actually plan in dollar terms for the next seven years (other than in broad estimates) what it is possible to do is to plan what can be put in place, quarter by quarter, that will provide an enduring future increasing set of 'stepping stones' that will, pretty much, be 'event proof'. This isn't as 'wankerish' as it sounds. There are constants that apply to business and 'immutables' if you look at any type of business over any sort of long term time frame. If any planner can determine what those 'constants' and 'immutables' are (not all that difficult to do) and then determine whether or not they can be applied to a specific company then, presumably, that company will be more successful in the future than it is today because it will be able to outperform many of its competitors each quarter. Sounds straightforward enough and it is. The only issues are the speed of technology and customer delivery changes and how those future changes can be not only be anticipated but how any 'money' spent "today" will also be an investment in the changing long term future rather than having only short term tactical advantages. Some of the things that Exetel has done from our very early stage fall into this category - unfortunately too many do not. On balance we have built better for the future than many companies we currently compete with and that has been a plus considering the inability of any start up company to really invest in even a medium term future unless it has very significant financial backing (which Exetel certainly didn't). Many of the companies we competed with in January 2004 simply disappeared along the way - presumably even their short term planning was not good enough to deal with the changes that have occurred over the past seven years. So my 'task' for this week is to map out as many aspects of the constants and 'immutables' that will affect the Australian Communications Industry over the coming years and determine which, if any, of them Exetel can attempt to implement. My track record of managing to do this is far from enviable. Copyright © Exetel Pty Ltd 2011 Sunday, March 27. 2011Swinish, Corrupt And Incompetent Rabble.......John Linton .........finally seen for being exactly that, albeit belatedly, by most of NSW's voters. Hans Christian Andersen's 'parable' comes true almost everywhere in our poor, benighted State - the emperor REALLY doesn't have any clothes at all (brings to mind a frightening image of the American Princess). The only pity is that so many of those corrupt travesties of human beings haven't ended up with the long prison sentences they so thoroughly deserve. Has there even been a more truly awful number of criminals ever given the chance to loot a State in any, so called, Western democracy in the history of the planet? The only disappointment was that the modern incarnation of Shakespeare's three witches (Keneally, Firth and Tebbut) somehow survived - in the latter two cases it seems that the electorate extended their new, probably all too brief, clarity of thought to seeing that 'the greens' were even crazier and more incompetent than Labor. It was also unsurprising to see that the voters who were so venally betrayed in the last Federal election dumped the Windsor and Oakshotte turncoat surrogates almost certainly signaling the end of those two venal hayseed's tenure in Federal politics come the next election. I am under no illusions that a coalition NSW government will rebuild the devastation that is NSW either quickly or well. It's unclear whether the dishonesty and corruption that is endemic within the Australian Labor Party also infects the Liberal and National parties but it would be foolish to believe it doesn't; although whether those political parties reach the sames depths of personal and operational depravity as the Australian Labor party seems unlikely but cannot be totally dismissed. The other problem will almost certainly be that the true state of the treasury will now be revealed and there will be very little money to do anything after 16 unbridled years of Labor pillaging, raping and looting. So what does it all mean - if anything? I think the sad, but not cynical, answer is - not much. While it's true things can't possibly be any worse it is highly likely that they won't get any better very quickly. NSW state departments are riddled with Labor appointees who are as incompetent and corrupt as the people who appointed them and permeate every level of every apparatus where Labor had any influence at all - and after 16 years of that sort of corruption it's hard to think of any area where that control didn't hold sway. So a lack of money and a lack of people within the NSW 'public service' (now there's an oxymoron) who can actually do something will ensure progress is going to be very, very slow. It could be worse; I could live in the USA where corruption at every level of politics has been endemic since 1776 and the control of 300 million people's lives within its borders and billions outside its borders is regularly bought and sold by the venal few. NSW Labor modeled their operational and control systems on the Democratic Party's (now there's another example of Orwell's 'big lie' technique) State and city "machines" whereby money is used to produce whatever outcome is desired in every aspect of political activities. In the USA you buy the influence you need from the president on down. Democracy never existed in the USA (remember how their revered constitution describes slaves?) - it was from the very start a plutocracy and is the best demonstration of how a plutocracy is the only enduring method of controlling ANY national grouping in the world and always has been; only the trappings and descriptions are changed from time to time to create and maintain myths that this is not the case. This situation was, as far as I'm aware, first lastingly and widely 'diagnosed' by John Dalberg-Acton's pithy phrase in the late 1800s. However it is self evidently true and has always been the case ever since the first 'political party' was brought in to existence. A 'political party's' SOLE reason for existence is to get its hands on the largest available sources of patronage and thereby divert as much money as possible into the hands of its members. While 'inventing' and 're-inventing' high minded sounding reasons for its existence over time it's first principle is to, ALWAYS, obtain power over others and therefore make its members rich at the cost of everyone else in the society in which it operates. I suppose that's why it's called a "party"? My long term correspondent on the state of this sunset phase of humanity's destruction of the planet, the erudite and ever witty, Cynicus Supremus ("not his real name"), would say that, in this piece of scribbling, I have severely understated the levels of corruption that exist, and always have existed, in Australia, and around the planet, today....but then I don't have his level of education nor his far more acute observational skills. The stench of corrosive corruption emanating from the rotting corpse of the 'ALP', a certain building in Sussex Street and every Labor politician that exists now or that has ever existed has become so all pervasive that this should be the end of that pernicious bunch of criminals. But can the NSW electorate remember just how incredibly awful those people are without having to destroy a State every time they allow them to con their way back to "power"? Copyright © Exetel Pty Ltd 2011 PS: http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/politics/one-small-word-one-giant-leap-for-nsw-20110327-1cbt9.html PPS: PPPS: http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/contributors/an-open-letter-to-eddie-obeid-20110329-1ceq0.html Saturday, March 26. 2011A Week To 'Treasure'John Linton Perhaps things have been too tough for too long and really enjoyable 'business' weeks have become so rare that periods like the last five days stand out so starkly. However, for once, everything that we did went far better than we expected or had any 'right' to expect....given the ways things had typically gone over the past two plus years. The highlight of the week/month was that by 4.30 pm yesterday afternoon the bell had rung for the eighth sale for the day and we had reached 100 business/corporate sales for a month for the first time and by 5.30 pm we had reached 101. With four full days of the month left it seems likely that the final number of business sales will reach as high as 120 which will well and truly put the '100 sales in a single month milestone' behind us. An added benefit of this month's sales is that the average sale value has increased by well over 20% since I last 'looked' and suddenly the next mile stone of $100,000 in new business revenue in a month seems much, much closer than 'predicted'. Almost all too good to be true but, if the current sales teams can continue to produce results like this in the coming months life for many people within Exetel will become much easier which will be a welcome relief after the past years of unrelenting pressure. Earlier in the week we completed our first third quarter review of our current financial year's business plan and finally see some very real light at the end of the very long, very dark and very confining tunnel we have been journeying through for what seems to me to be an 'eternity'. It is looking like the year will finish very strongly in the fourth quarter with the huge efforts we have made (and not a few 'gambles we have had to take) finally beginning to actually produce very positive results. Anything can go wrong in this strange business and I'm very definitely not counting any chickens prior to their egg exit but it seems to me that we have managed to move the company out of the dreary conditions we have been subject to for so long into a far more enjoyable looking 'future'.....at least as far as something as soulless as a business plan's financial prognostications can make anything look enjoyable. A very pleasant event was a largish percentage of the Exetel people who work in North Sydney going to see River Dance because one of the first corporate sales people we hired used to be a principal dancer for several years with that company before coming to work for Exetel. Even allowing for personal bias most of us agreed that Niamh was easily the best female dancer in the company and also by far the best looking. It was a thoroughly enjoyable evening. On Friday we received the second of two 'approaches' from the latest people expressing interest in buying Exetel. Perhaps there is some sort of sign somewhere that indicates Exetel is for sale? I have lost count of the number of approaches we have received over the past two years alone but its well into double figures....including three from ISPs larger than us, two from ISPs smaller than us and an assortment of of other companies not in the communications business at all or at least not in Australia. I doubt that anything will come of these latest enquiries as most approaches seem to be based on a belief that we are boneheadedly stupid and can easily be conned into giving away the results of seven years of intensely hard work by a group of highly skilled and creative people for 'nothing'.....or for so little it may as well be nothing. However it's always interesting to talk to people who think they are so much knowledgeable about your own company and infinitely more intelligent than you are. I hadn't realised how stupid I was until I had spoken to such people....that should really be - spoken to by such people....I don't recall ever doing much talking myself. We also got a series of improved 'offers' from our suppliers during the week that will in turn improve almost all of our current services to our customers. I suppose it continues to indicate how difficult the Australian communications markets continue to be when major suppliers 'reduce' their corporate/wholesale sales personnel by two thirds in a matter of a week or so which results in them being unusually accommodating in their dealings with even modest sized customers such as Exetel. There appears to be very little doubt that this is an end of an era in our industry. My personal week ended on a high by having one of the most enjoyable birthdays I can remember. Apart from the nicely written cards and thoughtful presents we had a fantastic Japanese dinner with some truly great food and great sake. I look forward to more weeks like this one.
Copyright © Exetel Pty Ltd 2011
Friday, March 25. 2011A Sort Of Eternal Youth.......John Linton .....but with only the bad and annoying (mainly to females) bits. There are any number of ways of getting any aspect of human life 'wrong' and far less ways to get any aspect 'right' - and males seem to get more wrong, more often and for much longer chunks of their lives than females ever do who, at least in their own estimations 'mature' almost from the day they are born. Today is one of those days where I was once again reminded of something I have known since I clearly seriously disappointed an early girl friend in my early 20s whose parting phrase was something close to "John Linton, you're a typical male - you'll never grow up!" (the exact bitter wording has faded from my memory over the years - but I've never forgotten the imputation and as the years pass I see the essential truth of it more and more clearly). Some/most males seldom 'grow up' before their late 30s and an awful lot of males, me included, seem to never grow up in the ways females expect us to do at all. While Helen Herbert (I still remember her name after all of these years - she was a truly sweet young girl (woman?) and I can still hear her heels click clacking angrily away as she spun on her heel and stormed down George Street) was almost certainly right in her early condemnation of my complete lack of 'seriousness' (though really - what male of 21 or 22 ever shows the slightest sign of 'maturity'?) she was quite correct in that over the succeeding decades I never did grow up in the ways that many females seem to expect although, in my own defence, that is partly because I have never seen any particular virtue in 'growing up' in the ways that phrase is often used and have actually made many conscious decisions over the years that I would prefer to think about and do things in ways that are deemed to be lacking in a 'grown up' way. Certainly not all males are afflicted with this curse but I imagine all those 'grown up' serious males never were anything but grown up from the day they were born..... if not from the day they were born then at least by the time they reached senior school where they always did their assigned studies completely and on time and never played any sport for the joy of it (or took part in any other non-scholastic activities) but, when they did, it was only because they were told it was good for their overall development. If you look at today's male presidents and prime minister's of countries or the heads of the world's gigantic corporations do you actually see any 'grown ups'? You may see the results of over arching ambition and avarice but do you see any 'maturity'? Even leaving out the extreme examples of John Kennedy and Bill Clinton or, in a different way, Richard Nixon can you name a single American President or leader of any other country that could be labeled a "good" let alone a "mature" man? This is one of those days for personal reflection when you look back at the past years of your life with either regret (I assume if you're a serious minded sort of person) or in my case with a vaguely regretful wry smile of indulgence at your lack of ambition or achievement and reflect on how much time and opportunity you have 'wasted' each year so far. For me, this only lasts for the briefest of moments.....but on this particular day I did remember that sweet young girl's dire prediction and feel grateful that she so clearly saw that my inadequacies were not only many and varied but that I would be incapable of ever moving towards more serious ways of looking at and living life. I hope she found someone more suitable and serious to spend the rest of her life with who added enjoyment, if not joy, to her every waking moment. Such observations aren't really 'true' - most males are capable of, and do, often act in a mature and sensible manner when called upon to do so. I just think and have observed that the vast majority of males, me included, continue to act and think irresponsibly when the opportunity arises which it seems to do more than often enough for females of any disapproving age (from about 3 onwards) to be able to screw up their faces and bark out "typically irresponsible male" for the rest of our lives. I would agree that females should run every aspect of life (assuming you don't think they do already) but then some clowns let people like Ms Faustus have more overt power and responsibility and you realise how dreadful the world would be without male irresponsibility. Sorry about inflicting the last few hundred words of nonsense on you in a typically male waste of time but it's my birthday and I'm getting the 'serious' reflections on my wasted life to date out of the way so I can indulge in the childish male activities of spending time with the people I really like and eating my favourite food and drinking far too many alcohol flavored drinks. Copyright © Exetel Pty Ltd 2011 Thursday, March 24. 2011Major New MilestoneJohn Linton
We had always had the objective of providing services to businesses rather than residential end users when we first set up Exetel in January 2004. That was because of the business backgrounds of two of the three founders and the view that there was a greater 'need' to offer business services that weren't based on the rip off pricing then extant and still extant today. However we realised that a company that was tiny and brand new would not make much of an impression on prospective business and corporate buyers and that it would be much more sensible providing cost/effective services to residential customers first especially if those customers could include a high proportion of IT professionals. In 2008 we had been around for almost five years and over that time had managed to be well enough regarded to have well over 200 business customers - a few quite large. It seemed to us that if we could rapidly accelerate our rate of growth of our business services we would be able to offset the depredations of Telstra Retail and other ISPs that were forced to follow Telstra's downward pricing programs. So, in March 2009 we hired our first corporate sales trainees and began the process of sales and engineering training that had very ambitious quarterly targets. Over the past two years we have met the majority of those targets and before the end of this month we will achieve our first major mile stone - we will sell 100 business/corporate data links in a single month in the exact month we 'predicted' this would happen. It has taken us two years to reach this milestone but the initiative has 'saved' Exetel from spiraling downwards in revenue and profit terms and has allowed us to continue to grow at a close to 20% revenue rate for the past two very difficult years. In financial terms 100 corporate data link sales deliver the same revenue as 1,000 residential ADSL sales and the profit of over 4,000 residential ADSL sales. So, in very broad terms, we have reached a major mile stone in changing our company to meet the changes that have occurred in the Australian residential marketplaces. Major changes in company directions are never easy and, more than occasionally, prove impossible, so it is a great 'relief' to have undertaken this quite risky strategy and, at least so far, made it work as we planned two years ago. It called for quite a lot of intestinal fortitude and a high percentage of correct decision making. Assuming that we can sustain the current rates of growth, and assuming we can continue to find the required numbers of very high quality new personnel we have protected Exetel from the slings and arrows of Telstra Retail et alia as new business service revenue/profit now far exceeds the continuing decline in residential revenue/profit. That looks very comforting on the forward business projections but we are making no assumptions about it continuing without constant change on our part. At 100 sales a month we are not on any competitor's "radar" but we are not dumb enough to think that will remain the case if we actually grow to a size where our 'wins' will affect one or more companies capable of doing something about losing their own customer bases. We need to tidy up our plans for such contingencies. We will hold a mild celebration when the 100th order is received over the next few days (currently on 88) and then move on to the (I am assured) even riskier strategy of fully integrating our Australian and Sri Lankan sales teams to give us 48 business sales people to accelerate the growth we have made happen so far to achieve our next major mile stone of achieving $100,000 of new revenue in a single month which is targeted for later this year - however we have a great deal of innovative work to get done before we can be sure of meeting that objective. It's nice, in these very difficult times, to actually make the 'numbers' you are aiming at and also to get so much pleasure from trying to do new, very difficult things. Copyright © Exetel Pty Ltd 2011 Wednesday, March 23. 2011Hiring Very Good People.........John Linton ......what 'value' could an HR 'function' add to such an activity? Exetel is not a very big company in any terms including personnel numbers (a little over 100 people). In general measurements we are an efficient company in terms of number of personnel/customer revenue and even more efficient in terms of personnel and other costs/customer revenue. We have achieved those ratios without ever employing any form of HR person/function and only in the last two years used a 'recruitment agency' to find suitable candidates - and that has been restricted to our Australian sales trainee program - in Sri Lanka and in Australia for other position types we simply use the IT advertisement on line functions which are similar similar in both countries. We use a simple hiring process of checking that the applicant's education standards matches our requirements and that their transcripts show a credit average or better and then we conduct one 30 minute or so interview mainly aimed at 'selling' the applicant on taking the job - already having decided to hire the person based on their resume before wasting the applicants time. Whether this is a sensible method of acquiring additional personnel or not can be judged by the results over time - in this case some seven years. In terms of retention/longevity it appears to be in that Exetel has a very, very low personnel turnover in any of the past seven years. In terms of meeting Exetel's growing needs - all supervisory and management positions within the company have been filled by current employees with the exception of the GM position in Sri Lanka and the Sales Director position in Australia. So a combination of those two facts tend to speak for themselves in simple terms. Sure - some HR centric person would say we could have done much better by using better and more sophisticated people/processes but my, observational, experiences and what I hear from acquaintances or read in the media doesn't seem to support such a view. Along with all my other old fashioned prejudices I have never seen any point in Exetel developing any sort of HR function - simply because, no matter who I have talked to no-one has ever been able to demonstrate what value HR adds to any company I have ever been associated with - let alone a start up company such as Exetel was, has continued to be and is currently. As far as I can see HR adds nothing to any company other than expense, poor judgment and time delays in getting anything done and encourages management abrogation in the key function of any growing company of delegating the most important activity of any growing company, hiring additional people, to one or more people who have no responsibility for the effectiveness of their decision making. Against that long held personal prejudice is the fact that virtually every company that operates around the world has an HR function so my personal view cannot really be correct.....except that it has delivered very good results for as long as I have held it and been in a position to make it happen. I could say this situation only works because of my personal abilities and insight when it comes to selecting people - but would be totally untrue. Some 50 plus people in Sri Lanka have been hired by the Sri Lankan GM, all programmers, accounting personnel and engineers have been hired by the various different managers directly responsible for those functions - all from advertising in the appropriate on line sites in both countries. What is it Exetel is missing out on by not having an HR department other than the expense and time delays of having one? If the most ambitious of our current plans becomes reality then Exetel will hire an additional 200 plus people over the coming two years. The only change that we will make to our hiring processes is that we will stop using recruitment agencies in Australia to find suitable sales trainees as the cost of doing that would become far too high for us to absorb comfortably so we will now start doing our own advertising in Australia for sales trainees and support engineers and see if that produces suitable applicants in the required numbers. Never a dull moment in operating a business of Exetel's size in the Australian communications industry. Copyright © Exetel Pty Ltd 2011 Tuesday, March 22. 2011'Residential' ADSL2 - A Difficult ChallengeJohn Linton For over seven years of providing ADSL services via Telstra's infrastructure we have eschewed providing a wire line telephone service. Although we have provided wire line telephony via the Optus infrastructure since Optus decided to offer wholesale ADSL services some five years ago but we could never see any real advantage to our customers by simply offering a similar service via Telstra - it just had no customer advantage. Things have changed recently, at least as far as Exetel is concerned, and we made an offer to our current Telstra infrastructure customers last night to transfer their land line telephone rental to Exetel and reduce, not their telephone line rental fees (we have no ability to do that) but to save on their call fees quite considerably. We also offered a five dollar reduction in their current ADSL service monthly charge if the signed up for a twelve month contract. Very 'ho hum' in our attempts to 'enliven' our residential ADSL marketing but it does provide some advantages to those customers who don't use VoIP and assists Exetel in its 'retention' activity. It addresses the 'one bill' market place which we have never attempted to address before and for those customers that take advantage of the $5.00 ADSL plan discount it adds a 'prevention' against the Telstra Retail 'win back' campaigns that seemingly will continue into the remainder of the current financial year. So it will be interesting to see what percentage of current customers decide to take advantage of this offer over the balance of March. I don't have any significant expectations but, as one of a number of measures, I expect it to contribute to the ongoing slowing of the Telstra churn aways. It is a somewhat pathetic start to changing the ways we offer ADSL services to different marketplaces but we have to do things like this (things different to what we have done in the past) to try and ensure our overall business targets are achieved. I wish I could say I, or other people within Exetel, have come up with a string of ideas to retain our current customers but I haven't had any breakthroughs in that direction. One vaguely interesting 'fact' is emerging - there is a small, but noticeable, increase in the number of 'ex-Exetel customers' who churned away to TPG returning to Exetel. Apparently all 'ISP Services' aren't the same after all. The other nice thing to see is the slowly increasing uptake of business customers who are buying ADSL services for their employees and the more rapidly increasing small business customers who are buying Exetel's ADSL services together with a range of other services. One minor success we have had in attempting to retain our residential ADSL customers has been the surprising, to me, uptake of bundled mobile plans linked to a discount on the customer's ADSL service. In the relatively short time we have been offering those services almost 4% of Exetel's current ADSL customers have taken them up - some customers buying two or even three mobile services and getting substantial discounts from their ADSL plans....one customer actually getting a refund each month on his ADSL service. It seems the only way to go in improving current customer's ADSL services - providing discounts by 'bundling' other services in to the overall price but it has been something we have always avoided doing...my personal prejudices and out of date views again holding up Exetel's progress. Maybe inspiration will strike today. Then again maybe it isn't an inspiration sort of thing. Perhaps it's just a ten million dollar advertising spend? Copyright © Exetel Pty Ltd 2011 Monday, March 21. 2011When Germany Started Building New Rail Routes In 1875.......John Linton ..... from various towns that contained miltary bases and munitions factories within Germany to various points on the Germany/France border were they looking at improving the future of the tourism industry? After the bloodbath of WWI when the French began building the Maginot Line did they not notice that it was the development of the tank that had lead to the actual end of fixed fortifications as a battle tactic? It's still raining heavily in Sydney and judging by the level of the pool it rained for a considerable part of the night...strange how heavy rain in a city where that rarely happens changes moods and therefore outlooks....or maybe that's just me. I spent Sunday, on and off between other things including the worst lunch I can remember paying for - serves us right for trying somewhere new on the recommendation of someone I should have known not to trust, trying to find something 'different' in terms of residential ADSL/other offerings and completely failing For this I blame the weather. For some reason the almost oppressive state of mind caused by heavy rain removes any remaining ability I might retain for creative thought. As March has, for as long as I have been living here, been the rainiest month of the year perhaps my gloomy outlook is inevitable. I looked over the notes I made yesterday earlier this morning and found no more inspiration than I had when I made them......if anything the few 'ideas' seemed even less sensible than when I gave in to lack of inspiration and wrote them down. Perhaps all this means is that Exetel needs someone with more insight in to the current markets than I have. I have to admit that I find it very difficult to continue to address the issues that are apparent in a 'fin de siecle' technology and all the nonsense that surrounds such events. Yesterday my mind kept drifting past the current year and its immediate followers in trying to imagine what would really happen if somehow the 'NBN2' really did continue and Telstra really did get its hands on an extra $A13 billion and actually did close down the PSTN over some period of time. What would happen? The one thing that always seems to happen in scenarios like this is that things don't turn out remotely as they are predicted to do (think WWI, WWII, Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan I, II and now III, Iran, Iraq or the latest Libyan 'wars' as the most obvious military examples over the past 100 years). Not only didn't they even vaguely turn out the ways described for them at the start but the time frames and magnitude of the wrongness was beyond comprehension at the outsets. So, now take the 'NBN2' - dreamed up as a face saver by a egotistic politician with absolutely zero knowledge of any sort of planning let alone facts and seized up by a disparate combination of a rabble whose stupidity and lack of understanding is boundless and vested interests who are delighted to peddle their wares to an incompetent buyer at very high prices. Is the 'NBN2' simply today's Australian version of France's Maginot Line but using infinitely more tax payer's money? So, such thoughts make it difficult for people like me to think very long term and thinking short term makes creativity impossible almost by definition - short term leaves very little scope for imaginative decisions - all decision are tightly restricted by immediate financial considerations. So....the weekend is over and my mental notepad is devoid of any sensible thoughts on how to better address today's residential ADSL marketplaces. I think it's the weather. Then again what does this announcement by Telstra actually mean: Copyright © Exetel Pty Ltd 2011 Sunday, March 20. 20112011 - Not The Best Time To Live In Humanity's Sad HistoryJohn Linton Woke to the news that Nature's cyclones, bush fires, earthquakes and tsunamis were not enough misery and destruction to be wreaked on humanity over the past two months but the major war mongering people of the world had persuaded their governments to use the latest high tech weaponry to destroy more people - this time in Libya. Doubtless Haliburton, Litton Industries et all will be awarded the 'post conflict contracts' to supply the weaponry and rebuild the facilities for what they are currently destroying in Libya and, of course, to replenish the missiles and other armaments lost by the US, UK, France et all in their prosecution of this meaningless and cynical action. So now the major warmongers have managed to start a third concurrent war to enrich themselves - where would they be without "democracy"?...their catch cry for all of the misery they have conjured up year after year over the past 65 years? Perhaps its the rain pouring down in Sydney for the second successive day of the weekend but it seems very depressing to realise, yet again, how venal the world has become in the name of "democracy" over my personal lifetime. We live in era of that makes Josef Goebbels concepts and Eric Blair's bleaker views of the stupidity of humanity quite modest and crude when compared to the actuality of living in 2011. As someone who had a very good grounding in 'history' and a lifelong interest in pursuing a better understanding in the events and reasoning that have created the world I grew up in and have since lived in I do understand the basic fact that humanity is doomed by its genetics and its 'learned behaviour' to conduct individual and group 'lives' by preying on the weak and taking as much as possible from any person or group of people they can mount superior 'power' against and that this is how a world dominated by humans will exist and always has existed. So, in my case, I get a woman without a soul or even a scintilla of ethics as the Federal prime minister in a cabinet whose combined morals add up to a negative and a State Premier whose naked ambition and lack of intellectual or ethical understanding of ANY issue causes her to look more and more like a pit bull salivating over a pile of skinned rabbits every time she speaks....and my life has been made progressively more difficult (as has that of every other citizen in this State) by that piece of arrant nonsense and the preceding con men, sleaze bags, rip off merchants and just plain criminals for the past 16 years. An election in Australia (State, Territory, Local or Federal) bears no resemblance to a democratic process. It compares almost exactly to the panem et circenses approach in Rome's declining years. It allows Ms Faustus to claim she "won" the last Federal Election when the fact was the Labor party (now what amazingly inciteful ironist first thought up that word and then made it common usage for the venal rabble that seek political power? - and how right he was to choose it) achieved less than 40% of the primary vote and then had to sell the souls of her unborn children (her own long gone) to cobble together a coalition of two rabid hayseeds and three other nincompoops so that she could continue to screw up everything she touches. So - warmongers make themselves even richer as the missiles shower down on Libya and soulless opportunists given power by the mindless mob send Australians to be killed in remote areas of the world that have nothing whatsoever to do with Australians (Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan) because they can. "Australian democracy"; even the stupid adulteration of the word as it currently exists, is an oxymoron. Copyright © Exetel Pty Ltd 2011 Saturday, March 19. 2011A 'Nice' WeekJohn Linton Time continues to speed by with last week over before it had started. We had a generally productive week highlighted by the long delayed 'turn on' of the new NTT 1.25 gbps of IP at the new Equinix PoP and the turn on of a new 500 mbps link between the new Melbourne PoP and one of the, now, four Sydney based PoPs (and as I write this I can't remember which on). Over time we will put in triple redundancy in to all of our PoPs in every State and in the case of Sydney and Melbourne the latest link represents quadruple redundancy. We also completed 'building' the first two large servers to trial our nascent 'cloud computing' service and I will be interested to see how that works out. We had another good corporate sales week (two more of our brand new trainees made their first sales and another one made her second sale) and three of our five Colombo based sales programs recorded solid results in these very early stages of implementation. So all in all a very productive week. It sounds odd to say this but - we did the first 'bit' of the various processes required to set our next financial year plan over the last two days. It seems incredible that we are almost at the end of March and that the disruptions of Easter and Anzac Day next month will mean that May will be upon us in a blink of an eye which is when we have to spend serious amounts of time looking at what we need to do over that twelve month period. We haven't made as much progress as we had hoped for in VoIP in either residential or corporate areas and we need to get those efforts back on track over the next three and a half months to ensure our very ambitious targets for FY2012 have any chance of being met. Although we are selling more corporate voip services a month than we have ever done and those volumes continue to grow each month we need to find ways of doing much more in this exploding growth area. It seems we are getting to a stage where our planning and review cycles are not keeping up with the constant changes we continue to face. We have still found it difficult to address the residential ADSL marketplaces although we have been able to turn that area of our business from increasing losses back to minimal profits over the past two and a half months. Churn aways continue to reduce but Telstra Retail continues to be the bulk of those churns - though at a vastly lower level than any time in the past two years. The various 'bundling' offers have 'worked' in that a continuingly increasing number of 'old' Exetel customers are renewing their contracts and bundling a mobile, wire line or wireless service. We really need to make some sort of 'break through' in this service but it has become almost impossible to find something 'new' to offer. However we must do that over the next two weeks. I read this earlier today: and wondered whether such actions will really do anything to reduce the abuse of email. My personal IronPort spam filter eliminated almost all spam some years ago and I am unlucky if I get one spam a month these days. The bot problem definitely affects Exetel users who get very annoyed when there service is suspended because their computer(s) have been hijacked to send spam. If in fact these actions by Microsoft have resulted in a reduction of 50% in 'spambotting' then that can only be a good thing. Though how anyone will ever get access to the Eastern European/old Soviet Union (let alone the PRC) spam menaces is something I don't understand. Time to enjoy the different aspects of life the weekend can sometimes make available. Copyright © Exetel Pty Ltd 2011
Friday, March 18. 2011The First, Obvious, Negative Effects Of The 'NBN2'?John Linton One of the obvious generalisations about the 'NBN2' would have been that it's long 'roll out' would mean that the owners of ADSL 'netorks' would cease to add new locations and would become very sparing in their 'maintenance and upgrading' of their current DSLAMs and back hauls. The unshakable logic would be that as parts of the 'NBN2' got closer to being turned on no fiscally responsible ADSL network owner in those locations would be adding back haul or new ports or even upgrading software and firmware in them. So, as an example, you couldn't expect, for instance, Telstra to be adding to back haul in, say, Armidale for the past few months and certainly not from this day forward. There would be absolutely nothing wrong with that decision as, generally speaking, you would expect some percentage (unknown) of current ADSL users in Armidale to move to the 'NBN2' once it became available for several reasons - none of which are either logical or sensible but then a fair percentage of buyers in any residential market place seldom exhibit such characteristics. If you believe Stupid Stephen, Don Quigley and the other shills within the ALP then you would expect a huge percentage of Armidale ADSL users to move to the 'NBN2' as soon as it becomes available. While those ludicrous claims will shortly be tested by what actually happens there is little doubt that the obvious scenario is already happening. Again, there is nothing wrong with any commercially constricted entity seeing a possibly dramatic change in any particular marketplace (in this case geographical) and ceasing investing in their infrastructures there because they believe that the number of customers in those areas will decline because of new circumstances. One scenario where that would not be appropriate would be if you are continuing to run customer acquisition campaigns to GROW your user base in such locations while also deciding you will NOT increase capacity to provide adequate services for those increased user numbers. So there is some sort of disconnect in what is almost certainly happening around Australia at the moment with several large companies trying to increase their ADSL customer base while simultaneously deciding not to increase capacity to provide services to that increased user base. How would you know whether or not that is happening? Well a 'tell tale' would be looking at, say, Telstra's published list of exchanges they state as being congested. If that list is growing in numbers and the 'age' of the listing is also growing then that could be an indication. If you visit some general or ISP specific 'forums' and see a growing number of speed complaints then that would be another 'tell tale'. That would only be necessary if you didn't accept that such scenarios are an inevitability of an 'NBN2' scenario in any industry. I haven't bothered to check on the current estimates of how long it will actually take for the 'NBN2' to become widely available to most likely users but one thing appears certain - many current ADSL users will see their speeds and reliability decrease from (before) now until they finally are forced to move to the 'NBN2'. In case you are one of those 'frogs' who believe monopolies are good for anyone this is a sobering read for frogs who welcomed the Heron King: http://news.smh.com.au/breaking-news-national/nbn-rivals-should-be-blocked-labor-20110317-1byrf.html Copyright © Exetel Pty Ltd 2011 Thursday, March 17. 2011You Can Teach A New 'Dog' Old Tricks........John Linton ......despite what the naysayers continue to aver. We continue to make progress in building our corporate sales operations in both North Sydney and Colombo adding five new sales trainees in Australia over the past month and six in Sri Lanka. Despite the ongoing insistence of various companies we compete with (made known to us via our major suppliers) that "you can't use silly young girls to deal with corporate IT decision makers" the success our, anything but silly, sales trainees achieve has remained constant throughout the duration of this initiative over the last two years. Of the latest new hires, three of the five have signed their first corporate customers well within their first month of working with Exetel and there is no reason not to believe that they, like 100% of their predecessors, will not achieve their probationary target of ten sales within their first four months of being taught how to present quite complex data communication services to 'old' male IT Managers of quite large Australian companies. As with every 'new' initiative in commercial life, you have to take a leap of faith and commit to major investment (comparatively) when you do something new and do it differently to what 'accepted practice dictates' is the 'only' way to do things. Such views are nonsensical of course. Progress can never be made in any area of human existence by doing everything in the same ways that were done in the past. If a new 'entrant' to any marketplace tried to do things in the same ways as the established suppliers then they would not even begin to succeed.....all that would happen is that they would waste a great deal of money in achieving nothing. We have a very, very long way to go before I could realistically say that our new approaches to providing data and voice services to business customers is going to meet our very, very ambitious objectives but what I can say is - so far so good. We had an amazingly strong business customer sales month in December 2010 when we received over 80 new orders for data services - a new record for the business sales teams. We may well go past that 'record' of sales in March if they continue the way they have gone so far with 60 sales made by COB yesterday. However numbers are just a way of 'keeping score' and the reality of growing any business is continually doing things better than the people with whom you are competing. Whether Exetel can do that is only sensibly measured over years - not months. But the 'laws' of sales success haven't changed in over 4,000 years so it is not that difficult to understand what is required to be done - only doing it consistently over a long period of time. After two years we can consider that the first phase of building a corporate sales and support operation is almost 'complete' if such a word can be applied to any commercial venture in ever changing competitive marketplaces. Our second phase is to develop a parallel sales and support operation in Sri Lanka that becomes ever more closely integrated in to the North Sydney based sales and support teams. This was begun in November 2010 and is making some faster than expected progress. If we can make this work in the ways we envisage over the coming months then that will make a massive difference to what we will be able to achieve over the balance of this calendar year. The investments in personnel, time and money to try and make this happen are very large in our terms but in developing the concepts of providing corporate communications services it seemed the most logical way to go. It will continue to be very exciting to see if the progress made so far can not just be sustained but accelerated. Copyright © Exetel Pty Ltd 2011
|
CalendarQuicksearchArchivesCategoriesBlog AdministrationExternal PHP Application |