John Linton It has been an interesting week in some ways though wasting a day at the TIO 'mediation' meant that it was difficult to do all the things that needed to be done in the remaining time available.
In residential ADSL areas one of the most noticeable things is the increasing absence of Exetel customers who churn away to TPG and the increase in Exetel customers who previously churned to TPG returning to Exetel. It's very noticeable because mid 2010 churn aways to TPG accounted for over 50% of all churns (the vast majority of the other 50% being to Telstra Retail). Telstra Retail now accounts for over 80% of all churn aways, out of a much lower daily total than a year ago, with the remaining 20% often not including even a single churn to TPG. Even the churn aways to Telstra Retail have reduced to a point where more people churn from Telstra to Exetel than the reverse each day which has not been the case since the start of the Telstra 'win back campaigns'. Nice to see.
Something that continues to surprise me is the number of new mobile customers that come to Exetel each day. We have never been a very 'attractive' provider of mobile services but quite early in the 'life' of our switch to supplying Optus mobile services we are gaining four times, sometimes five times, more new mobile customers each day than we ever did when we were providing mobile services via Vodafone.The more interesting 'fact' is that we are getting many more 'multiple' new customers where they buy two, three or sometimes more mobiles at a time. These are standalone mobile services not linked to a 'bundled' ADSL sale which surprises me even more. I would like to know what is generating these sales - but I have no idea.
Corporate VoIP continues to 'boom' with 59 new corporate customers signed up in the first 15 days of July. While people like me and Exetel have been using VoIP to run a very 'sophisticate' business linking two different countries and two Australian States for over four years the recent accelerated take up by so many new Exetel business customers has surprised me in terms of the diversity of small businesses that have 'shaken off' all their previous doubts about VoIP quality and reliability. The savings for small businesses changing to VoIP are huge as most small businesses pay far too much for their telephone lines and calls and have not ever looked past getting those services from Telstra who are at the very top of over charging for such services. It is not unusual for these new small business customers to reduce their telephone costs by 75% by changing to VoIP.
It is only two weeks in to the new financial year and we are still not meeting all of our July targets on a daily basis but there is a much better 'feel' to the start of FY2012 than there was to both FY2011 and FY2010. Perhaps its just exhaustion from the constant daily negatives that we have dealt with over the past 30 months which have dulled the sensibilities....that could be a factor....but it doesn't account for what I currently see in the daily results nor what I read about our 'competitors' in the media and pick up from our suppliers and other sources. I very much get the 'feeling' (a strange word to use for someone whose last 20 years of business life has been based on analysis and planning) that we are at what a very famous prime minister once said about infinitely more important events:
"It is not even the beginning to the end but it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning"
.....that is the feeling I have.
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