John Linton ....as 'NBN2' moves from wild election winning promises to actual cost of delivery.
We have made some progress over the week to date in terms of making our customer referral more 'attractive' and in making other similar changes to several other aspects of methods of operating. Our six months free promotion will be ending in a few days and we have an ability to use a similar amount of carrier new business subsidy in a different way or simply continue the continue with the current type of 'free months' promotion at a reduced rate. We will make up our mind over the coming weekend as to what we will do/which direction we will take after discussing the various options with those of our current customers who wish to make known their views.
We will also send out the 'invitation emails' to those of our customers who are in the 'NBN2' trial areas in NSW and SA later today offering the free install and no charge use until September 30th 2011. This trial allows a customer to retain their ADSL service and use both ADSL and fibre 'side by side' while continuing to pay only for the ADSL service. On or before 30th September they select which service they would like to keep. If they don't want to continue with the fibre service then they are not charged for it to be removed and they simply go back to using their ADSL service at their contracted price per month.
The real issue is what price we set for 'NBN2' services. The Labor government has made a major issue in their litany of idiotic statements about the benefits of an 'NBN2' along the lines of "more speed at the same price of ADSL2". At 'NBN2's' wholesale pricing today that simply isn't going to happen....at least not from Exetel. Why? Because the monthly port cost of the lowest speed fibre service and the 'back haul/CVC' cost is higher than even Telstra Wholesale charge for an ADSL2 service.....and is almost double the cost of an Optus ADSL2 service.....and that the fibre cost is going to get much higher once the 'trial phases' end and the POIs move to their planned 121 locations instead of, as they now are, in CBD major data centres.
Along with the other activities this week we have been looking at how we price fibre services via the 'NBN2' for those trial customers who might wish to retain a trial service beyond 30th September 2011. It doesn't look good to us and is complicated by not having fixed quotes from back haul providers to and from the different 'NBN2' POIs. Its easy enough to work out a capital city price but nearly impossible to work out a price for Kiama and Armidale let alone Willunga. Good or bad we now need to provide pricing for any of our current ADSL customers who wish to participate in the 'free trial'. Our problem is that we don't know the actual costs of the back hauls to/from the POIs that will eventually be put in place. So it's a more than usually difficult task and one that will burn up the remaining time this week.However we will email the trial customers today and put the NBN pricing on the web site by COB.
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5 - The number of fingers and toes on each hand and foot most humans are born with - makes no sense when you think about it.