John Linton Yesterday was a deeply unsatisfying day.....and I don't feel that way very often. Nothing seemed to 'go right' and I became more and more irritated as the day progressed which is highly unusual for me as I, long ago, developed the ability of being able to totally focus on important things and ignore anything else. Not yesterday for some reason and, when I woke up this morning, I'm still feeling irritated at the various 'incidents' that ruined my day yesterday - a highly unusual situation. Perhaps the stresses and strains of the past three years are finally making their mark or perhaps I am beginning to realise that I am the wrong person for the position I currently hold. I put it down to the time of year - when so much time is spent thinking about making changes that, inevitably, you question your own abilities, and desires,to continue to participate in operating a business in continuingly tough times. However, fortunately, such days are rare and as every adult learns to do - you get over them.
Most of the coming day will be spent on doing the basic 'figures' for 2012 and what exactly we will aim to achieve over the coming months that is different to what we are currently achieving. Our principal change is in how we will operate the business next year in terms of the relationships we have with our current suppliers and what new relationships we need to develop. NBNCo remains a conundrum and I was amused to get an invitation for a 'private dinner' with Tony Abbott to discuss issues of interest and concern to Exetel. I, very briefly, considered what benefits could be achieved by ponying up the $11,000 for that privilege before quickly reaching the conclusion that I could learn nothing of interest for such a very large expenditure. In fact I think Tony Abbot should pay me to give him/Malcolm Turnbull some more sensible views than they currently express on what they might do with NBNCo should they ever get elected.
So what does the NBNCo mean to Exetel over the coming twelve months? It is one of the hardest 'calls' to make. I have no doubt that, in the event there is a change of Federal government, that the NBNco roll out will be halted and whatever exists at the time will be sold off to the 'separated' Telstra. If that was to happen it would make very little difference, in the shorter term, to how a company like Exetel would utilise the NBNCo fibre services. The single good thing about the NBNCo is its, current, statement that it will not charge lower prices to large wholesale customers (thus re-introducing the current lop sided scenario). If this process was to be maintained into the reasonable future then companies like Exetel would be able to operate far more profitably in the future than is remotely possible today. Why? Because we have painstakingly and painfully built the infrastructure and operating processes that allow us to deliver any given service at a lower cost, by quite a long way, than any company we compete with.
So we can't ignore the NBNCo if it is going to roll out some realistic levels of infrastructure more quickly than it has so far - current scenario is really pathetic. I may be 100% wrong in my view that, at least for Exetel, the current NBNCo roll out is more useful for small business than it is (for us) for residential users. Personally I see almost no advantage of NBNCo fibre for residential users at all at this time and until there is a low cost 'entertainment' service that needs fibre speeds then I can't see any advantage to a sensible end user to pay more for fibre than they do for ADSL. I could be quite wrong - but my view of fibre is that it is of value to Exetel (because of the current pricing that ensures Exetel can compete better than it can on ADSL) I just don't see the value to today's residential user. It could have an advantage for some business users in the country and we do need to work out how to take advantage of that possible opportunity.....assuming it materialises.
I hope I manage to maintain a better perspective of things generally today than I did yesterday.
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