John Linton There are far too many 'imponderables' affecting today's residential communications communications marketplaces for me to make any real assessments of in any meaningful ways. The 'fate' of residential ADSL seems to be determined by ever more raucus advertising and, in Telstra's case, by ever more intrusive telephone marketing 'get this free' offers - we received either our eighth or ninth last week - which provide me, should I have been in a position to take up the offer, with ADSL at 20% less than Telstra Wholesale charges Exetel for the same service. To get this service at such a low price I would have two buy two other services at very high prices but presumably the average person who gets such an approach is already paying Telstra those ludicrously high prices or hasn't got the mental arithmetic skills to understand what they are committing to while on the telephone. (a recent churn away from Exetel to Telstra said he thought he was signing up for $80.00 a month but his first two bills were for $120.00 per month but he wasn't able to do anything about it because Telstra told him that's what he agreed to).
I reached this 'conclusion' while doing other things last night - probably as a result of torpor induced by over indulgence at Mother's Day lunch or the sheer silliness of whatever was on Foxtel which was providing background noise and giving an excuse not to be involved in conversation allowing the mind to wander in other directions. 'Free' is very much the deus ex machina (or should that be 'MacGuffin') driving most ADSL marketing programs at the moment - well, if not 'free' then at least heavily discounted to an unusual extent. I think it was around 10.30 pm that I decided I had been getting nowhere for so long, over two years, trying to understand how to offer appealing ADSL plans that thinking about how to do that any more was pointless...there just has to be better things to do with a life.
Australia has become even more of a nanny state than the Scandinavians over the past four years:
http://www.itwire.com/it-policy-news/regulation/46995-stop-the-free-calls-rip-off-says-accan
...for goodness sake - just how far is this nannyism going to go under the current non-government. Yesterday's precious princess who couldn't accept that downloading while making calls on a mobile telephone device was cause for a TIO complaint and this bit of sheer nonsense beggars belief as to what is expected of communications providers. The demands for free services, or expectations that free is some sort of absolute right of consumers has become a total joke. The telecommunications suppliers are now 'hurting' their users because the !@#$%^&* government doesn't answer telephone calls promptly???????????? It must be the begining of the end when such thinking gets media space/time!
Because of my background, education and age, I simply don't relate to how things happen and are spoken about now. As Harry so aptly said in 1971 - "a man's gotta know his limitations" - and I am pretty sure I have reached mine. After more than 15 years of trying to work out the best ways to provide whatever the latest communications services were/are at the lowest possible prices to residential users I have reached my use by date and need to do something both more productive and more enjoyable.Unfortunately I am pretty sure I have neither the education or experience to do anything else so the future looks pretty bleak for me.
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