John Linton Because we booked so late due to having to re-schedule this trip we had to 'over night' in Singapore which is no big deal other than wasting a day of our holiday. We had the usual very pleasant flight with Singapore airlines with the usual over the top service and charming cabin crew which, yet again, reinforces why with the same planes with the same seats on the same schedules that service makes a huge difference to the long distance flying experience and why we have almost never flied Qantas for over 30 years. Even the person who checked in our luggage at Sydney airport greeted me by name when I dumped our bags on the conveyor. How on earth did he know my name? So I asked him and he said he remembered me from his Ansett days when he used to check in my car at Ansett's valet parking service - which meant I hadn't seen him for over ten years. Sad to remember how a great airline lost its way.
I watched a couple of totally unmemorable movies while dozing the eight hour flight away yesterday and turned over in my mind the residential ADSL issues we are facing. Our problem, perhaps other companies problems are that the possibility that the NBN will continue in either possible way will not be helpful in maintaining a viable ADSL business over its dreadfully long 'roll out'. The thought of going through the last three years for another unknown number of years is simply not tenable....at least not for me. While I have an indelible understanding that all business is simply 'in business' to make money for its shareholders that is a pretty depressing to way to spend the latter years of your life. It is fine when you are young and can make your gazillions from your bright ideas before you're 25 and then go on to do something useful with your life - but it's a very long time since I was 25.
So as Jason Statham beat yet another person who totally deserved it to a pulp or Cate Blanchett minced and moued across the screen for more meaningless minutes my mind drifted across the options that I, and Exetel may have in residential Australian marketplaces in the coming years. We have lost our reason for being in the residential business because Telstra now prices their 'head line services' lower than they sell them to us for. We have survived that three year 'siege' by cutting our prices to below our costs and made up the difference in add on services to that percentage of our customers who buy voice wire line, mobile or other services. But that is not a sensible thing to do unless their is some sensible pay back for all of that money and people investment.
Providing residential communications services over the past seven plus years has allowed us to build a very, very solid and resilient net work that is highly cost/effective which has, in turn, allowed us to begin to build a formidable capability to compete in non residential markets. Our challenge is now to find how, or if, we can continue to compete in the future residential markets or if we would be better off deploying those resources in other more sensible ways. Something to think about on the flight to London because the two movies that bored me witless on the flight to Singapore seemed to be the best of a bad lot.
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