Friday, December 16. 2011Where Did 2011 Go......John Linton ....as we reach the start of the last 'full' working day of 2011? In every past year I can remember the Christmas 'exodus' emptying of offices and factories round Australia (but presumably not mines) begins today with business people heading off on their annual holidays signallng the end of contract decision making with only the hardy few leaving their departure until the days up to next Friday. Residential orders begin to diminish as home buyers get on their planes and into their cars that will take them to destinations where they will not need to buy personal internet connections except to cancel them or put in churn orders for when they return. The large student 'population' of users will have cancelled their internet services by now (the honest ones) with the growing number of dishonest ones simply leaving their rental accommodation and allowing their unpaid internet and telephone service bills to cancel the services for them in the hope/expectation that they will not be chased for the money owing in their homes in some obscure Chinese town or anonymous Australian city suburb. Today is likely to be a very good day for business orders (it always has been in past years) as IT managers around the country begin to 'clear their desks' or take their last chance to get other people within their company who are going on holidays today to sign off on their proposals before it is too late. We have had a good December so far with more than a few of our service categories already well over their end of month targets - reflecting the understanding and reality that December is, effectively, almost a 'two week month'. We will continue to get orders next week from the people who have had to leave contract signing to the very last minute but it will now rapidly tail away....and so all that remains is to 'tidy up' all of the undone things next week and then take a few days to contemplate the future. We had our final, informal, board meeting of the year at a very nice Sydney restaurant (EST) yesterday. We discussed the key aspects of the company over one of the best lunches I have ever had in Australia matched with beautiful wine and finished off with superb Cognac - a once a year indulgence as a minor reward for working so hard for the previous twelve months with the only future reward being to do it all over again next year. We ratified the decision to enter in to the arrangements I mentioned yesterday and discussed how/if we would proceed with the other transaction we have been discussing over the previous month or so as well as some lesser issues....but mainly we just enjoyed the food and talked about non-business issues. So the Christmas party and the last board meeting of the year conclude 2011 and the remaining days of the year will be spent polishing up the plans for the first and second week of 2012. For the first time, all three Exetel directors will be in Colombo at the same time in early January to, as well as many other things, formally mark the commencement of our new venture there and to participate in the final education/training sessions with the two Australian managers of the program before the full program gets under way on January 16th. It will be a very different 'start of year' to the past eight and as equally exciting in it's way as January 1st 2004 when Exetel commenced offering ADSL residential services. So there will be no somnolent December/January for any of us this year....not that I can recall one being that way in any past year. Copyright © Exetel Pty Ltd 2011 Thursday, December 15. 20112012 Financial Outlook........John Linton .......is not that good. The financial 'status' of the world's national economies is a complete mystery to the world's national leaders according to the financial sections of the world's media. According to Whine Swan and Ms Faustus - Australia has nothing to worry about because of the 'mining boom' which they apparently haven't noticed is dependent on the rest of the world's nations buying Chines exports. I have zero/less than zero knowledge of world financial scenarios but I assume that unemployment is a bell wether guide to any country's overall economy as is the ratio of 'public servant employment' to 'private sector' employment. I tend to read the EU and US financial media more than I do the Australian financial media as it is less hysterical and appears to be much better informed and this particular piece of statistical reporting caught my eye earlier this morning: and appeared to be provide a sensible view about the will there/wont there be a recession versus a recovery in 2012....a recession is likely....as did this: http://news.smh.com.au/breaking-news-business/greek-pm-warns-economy-to-shrink-20111215-1ovj5.html I have experienced two recessions in my time in Australia and both were extremely unpleasant for a large percentage of Australians although not for me personally - in fact the second one enabled us to buy the house we still live in almost 20 years later for "half price" - at least less than 60% of its high point asking price - so I do understand that recessions are not necessarily bad for everyone. Perhaps the dummies in the ALP are right - and we will dig out of the ground our protection from recessions in EU countries, the UK and the US? It's completely beyond my non-existent knowledge to comprehend what will happen in Australia's economies over the coming year. I did sell all of our shares back in February because my untutored view was that it was all bad news in financial terms and that financial decision 'saved' me 20% of the value of our shares at that time. It was therefore not without some trepidation yesterday that we shook hands on a deal to quasi JV a significantly increased investment in Sri Lanka in terms of additional employees and the associated 'floor space and ancillary costs' yesterday on the basis that now is the right time to rapidly grow our capabilities to sell and support small and medium business services around Australia. This is a very different decision for Exetel as we have always guarded our 'independence' very jealously so that we always had total control of our own future. This has not always been a good thing but it has been the way we have chosen to operate the company from day one. We would expect both parties to sign the formal agreement before Christmas once the two remaining, very minor, issues are resolved and begin the quasi JV program in mid January. We still have another major decision to make to complete our planning for the next six months but that is looking increasingly harder to bring to a positive resolution.....though that shouldn't be the case. Although I still retain vestiges of my reckless 'business youth' I am far more conservative these days and I have too many reservations to proceed as it currently stands - although I realise my concerns are almost certainly groundless. So it might only be one out of two rather than two out of three - but it still "ain't bad".......as the quote on the front of our web site reminds us - "you can't eat money". Copyright © Exetel Pty Ltd 2011 Wednesday, December 14. 2011The Twelve Days Of Christmas Have Begun.....John Linton .....or have they? As yesterday was December 13th perhaps the 12 days of Christmas started then ending on Christmas Day? Long ago (and when only an austere encyclopaedia were available as a reference) I, and a number of other sub teens at an English boarding prep school spent some time as the weather got progressively more Arctic and the Christmas holidays drew ever nearer trying to determine when the 12 days actually started. We failed miserably in our clumsy 'research' and eventually asked the vicar at the local Anglican church after, compulsory, Sunday church attendance one Sunday. He told us that the ancient song had nothing to do with Christmas or any particular time frame but was written by Roman Catholic catechists in the 1600s as a way of reminding young RC children of the major tenets of their faith during times when to be a Catholic was a punishable offence and nothing could be written down. I have been reminded of this arcane piece of knowledge/folk lore several times lately when different Exetel personnel have quite seriously told me when questioned about some strange action that "that's the way we've always done it". As one of Exetel's 'founders' the one thing I know about our business is that it has constantly changed since our 'first day' yet I now hear this silliness many times a month. Not only is it silly it's really scary to think we now have people who are not aware of the need for constant improvement (change) in every aspect of a telecommunications business and their need to be part of initiating that, real, change by always looking for things to improve - of course not changing things for the sake of it. Believing that there is some immutable way/process of doing anything in our business is as silly as a bunch of 11 year old English schoolboys trying to find out the period described in a 400 year old folk song when it had been written as a memory aid for a forbidden 'religion' with no relationship to time/dates/geese/hens/partridges/milk maids/etc whatsoever. How does anyone 'manage' people in ways that totally promote sensible change when any commercial organisation has grown beyond 20 or 30 people, all of whom constantly communicate with each other? How do you overcome the tendencies of people who seldom meet each other to accept as "gospel" what the last person who trained or managed them said?.....bearing in mind that what is the best/only way to do something one day will need to be varied as products/services/process inevitably change over time? It is becoming a major challenge for our company - particularly as our operations are split over two very different geographic and 'cultural' areas. Our industry has an overwhelming need for precision which is significantly complicated by dealing with several different suppliers whose systems and processes vary widely. Obviously not in the ways we are addressing these issues at the moment. So......among all the other things that take up all the time in any particular day we also need to change our management processes - fundamentally - over the coming years to move away from whatever we currently have in place to something completely different. What that may be is unclear to me and I don't think I have heard any useful suggestions 'internally' nor do any of my business acquaintances have much to offer when this subject has arisen. They, like me all those years ago, tend to see the problem as stupidly as looking for the actual period covered by the 12 days of Christmas song - i.e. we start from a totally wrong premise when trying to find a solution to a question...we don't realise that the question we are asking is complete nonsense. Something to ponder on during this "12 Day Christmas Season". PS: And talking of Christmas - is God alive and well in Geneva? Copyright © Exetel Pty Ltd 2011
Tuesday, December 13. 2011Automation And SimplicityJohn Linton We are sorting through the various actions required by the various operating plan changes completed last week. If you create a business process and it runs well/faultlessly for many years it tends to come as a surprise to begin to notice that problems have begun to develop that never existed in the past. This, in a company that constantly monitors every aspect of its systems via our own and constant customer feed back, is even more surprising to me. Nevertheless it has become clear that things once taken for granted are not being done as faultlessly as they have been in the past. It's disappointing and also surprising given the automated nature of the overwhelming majority of Exetel's business processes. The issue, now that we are subjecting it to some ongoing scrutiny, appears to be that newer people within Exetel have been introducing more and more manual ad hockery in to previously fully automated systems to address changing needs. I have become so reliant on our automated reporting systems which I constantly update and change that I have not participated in ensuring all other parts of the company have continued to develop the systems and processes which they have 'inherited'. So, it's becoming apparent that we will need to do a more formal, and more complete, audit of our long established processes and recover the long established mantra of "every process must be fully automated - there is no such thing as semi-automated". It sounds simple enough to accomplish and I have always thought it was - but it seems that over time and with less than total attention it is not as simple for people who have not come from a background where total automation is simply the only way to do things. As few/none of our major suppliers (and none of our smaller suppliers) have fully automated systems it requires a lot of effort to make full automation 'happen' and it appears to be that difficulty that, as products and services change, has allowed an increasing amount of manual processes to infect the 'purity' of previous standards. I am not sure just what we need to do to recover the current situation but it is going to take some time and a different approach from many of our people. Having thought about it for not long enough it appears to me that it falls in to the same category as everything else in life that is 'inherited' - it is just taken for granted and no effort is put in to 'maintaining it' because it 'just is'. There can be no recognition that it' took a lot of time and effort by 'predecessors' to firstly realise it was necessary and then the efforts and time required to actually put it in place. How you go about engendering that thinking into 'newer' people is something that may be difficult to do. While it's part of an inevitable transition from one 'size' company to another it doesn't make it any easier to accomplish. Food for thought. Just what to do to recover the simplicity of our first five years and the people and processes that delivered those, in their minor way, exceptional results. Perhaps the huge difficulties of the past three successive years have contributed to those circumstances more than I have realised and it's now past time to return to our simple objectives and, more importantly, methods. Monday, December 12. 2011Service Quality Continues To Dominate.......John Linton
.....ISP Land in Australia....at least it dominates the ISP's chatter about themselves. Apart from the nonsense that is the TIO (which if you believed any word it published you would be lead to believe that 'service and services' provided by telecommunications companies is continually getting worse) most companies keep hyping all the efforts they are making to improve all aspects of the services and service they provide to their customers. Whether they are being forced to do this in a set of marketplaces in which there is almost no differentiation other than price or the user experience in solving problems is not for me to say...my view is there is no more ability to cut prices (other than cosmetically) so only service (as opposed to services) remains to promote a telecommunications offering. I downloaded this earlier this morning from an ad in the WSJ: http://c190499.r99.cf1.rackcdn.com/Aberdeen_Service_Revenue.pdf it's hardly Earth shattering or ground breaking in any way but it does provide a, somewhat simplistic, view of service as a product that needs to be combined with other products in the overall offering to increase customer retention (it can't play much of a part in customer acquisition). This is hardly 'news' but the fact that is being treated like that indicates something about today's service providers. Anecdotaly Telstra provides some of the worst service in Australia but continues to dominate every service sector in which it operates - so don't get too carried away with this concept......also take this with a grain or sack of salt or so: One of the issues that Exetel have been addressing for over four years now has been how to improve our, customer perceived, levels of service. It has been an impossibly difficult aspect of business to address given that any unreasonable customer defines service as meeting whatever unreasonable needs they may have at any given time and what even reasonable customers require on occasions. We recently changed our definition of support away from what it had been for our entire 'existence' - we only supported the actual service we provided (if we could successfully 'ping' the customer's modem then we had fulfilled our service obligations) to helping the customer fix their own set up problems and wait on the line to help them correct their configuration and/or set up mistakes. This goes far beyond what any service organisation is required to provide (fixing the customer's inadequaces or that of equipment the bought from another supplier)nand should not be required - but then meeting unreasonable customer's needs is how unreasonable customers define "service". The immediate result of making this change, unsurprisingly, is greater dissatisfaction with the service we provide with average call response times 'blowing out' from around 2 minutes to around 8 minutes. So the move to 'complete service' is currently a failure in those terms. How we address that issue is yet to be seen but we have achieved the main objective of the move whereby over 80% of all support calls (that do not require carrier intervention) are now 'fixed' on the first call and it seems likely that we can 'ratchet up' that percentage over the coming months....depending on being able to do a number of things which include some quite difficult ones like changing the ambitions of our support engineers and providing ongoing training in the ever growing array of hardware used by residential ADSL users these days. We need to be successful in these endeavours, not purely to improve what unreasonable residential customers perceive as 'adequate' service levels but to address the new type of user we expect to be dealing with in 2012. We already have a sizable percentage of our ADSL customers who use their service for business and we expect this to grow more rapidly over the coming three years. While a residential user who can't play his latest game because he has been fiddling with his router settings is a personal tragedy for him but a small business customer who can't use the internet because he/his wife/his children/his co worker(s) etc have "done something" to his set up is a lot more serious. Providing service to the small business sector of the market place is a real challenge to do well. If it also improves the residential user experience then that will be a bonus. Copyright © Exetel Pty Ltd 2011
Sunday, December 11. 2011Email - Here To Stay.......John Linton .......for as long as Mr Hill's inspired concept of postage stamps has lasted......"texting"....I'm not so sure. I read this earlier this morning: and considered what I have seen over the last few years in terms of business internet usage. I exclude myself from this consideration because I don't think I know anyone who uses the telephone (fixed line or mobile) less than I do or uses email more. I do this because I prefer the 'audit trail' of email compared to the lack of a 'audit trail' with phone calls and I have got in to the habit of seldom turning my mobile on except when I want to make a call - which is rarely. So I found the article interesting in its dissection of reply patterns and just general timings. I have read two other articles recently on the 'demise' of email caused by social texting which were just garbage opinion pieces (as this article is largely restricted to being) with no possibility of ever acquiring the research to support the views expressed - how could you ever attempt to measure the comparative usage changes in email and text across any population sector? Obviously you can't do that in any meaningful way. So whether the desire for various sections of any population to 'text' (strange how a noun has morphed into an adjective or adverb in current usage again demonstrating the paucity of education in these barbaric times) various 'friends' constantly during the day and night has changed their business email usage is impossible to gauge - as the two correspondents are totally different it would seem highly unlikely....at least to me. Email serves an obvious and immediately useful purpose - communicating with other people in business immediately and easily. It's replacement of Australia Post is equally obvious and the changes in the speed of iterative correspondence cannot be underestimated. A telephone call cannot provide an adequate substitute and a written 'letter' cannot begin to be as efficient. Over the past 20 years (since OzEmail/Malcom Turnbull/Etc recognised the need to introduce the concept in to Australia) email has dominated the ways all business operate to a degree that is impossible to estimate. Just how would any business operate in Australia today without email? It certainly couldn't use SMS or 'texting'. Not since the four posts a day stage of the UK postal system has their been any reason for something like email to exist -it beggars the imagination that you could once exchange correspondence with someone via the early morning, 11 am, afternoon and evening post if you were in the same city/town which, in those days, would have taken care of most business dealing let alone personal correspondence. deleted. I have to confess that I have never actually sent an SMS and the few I have received I have simply deleted. I understand my peculiarities are totally irrelevant to the ongoing development of instant communications. What I do wonder is just how far SMS/its equivalents will develop from here into the medium term future. Will SMS last two or so centuries as postage did? Does SMS have any truly long standing usefulness other than conveying notice of being late for 'face to face' meetings? I now work with people who seem to receive a stream of, I assume purely personal, 'messages' in meetings, during lunch and when you are talking to them at their desk or in the street. Many of them consider it to be perfectly OK to not only read the messages but then reply to them while you are engaged in talking to them. I wonder how long their 'face to face' interlocuters will put up with this gross rudeness before they snatch the offending device and hurl it to the ground and then stamp on the pieces? Then again, perhaps everyone else in the world except for me has the mental capacity to 'converse' on two completely different subjects simultaneously. Copyright © Exetel Pty Ltd 2011 Saturday, December 10. 2011End Of Year - Time For Contemplation - PerhapsJohn Linton We had the Exetel Christmas party last night for our Australian personnel which was at a new location within the casino (Bistro 80) as they have demolished the old section that contained our long term venue - the Mill Room. We followed the same format as in the past six years - a lot of high quality finger food (more than sufficient for even the most voracious eaters) and an open bar with high quality alcohol. The entertainment was a reprise of the tarot card fortune teller, the caricaturist and the up close 'magician ' who have been a 'hit' for a number of years plus a, very, short 'speech' on the main achievements of 2011 (few) and some insights in to the changes planned for 2012 (many). Two and a half hours of accelerated alcohol consumption before most people headed for the gambling floor to turn their gift chips into a small fortune - or not - as the case may be and others went to party on at some other locations. From the volume of general noise and laughter it was a very pleasant party. We also had a good sales day yesterday in most aspects of the corporate and business product sets though there are the first signs of the Christmas 'slow down' in residential land with Friday probably being a major company function day/night with many people concentrating on getting to and from their Christmas parties to bother much about ordering as many residential telecommunications services as they would normally do from Friday afternoon on into the night....certainly the dearth of residential orders so far today indicates a much higher rate of morning afteritis than is usual on a 'normal' Saturday morning. I feel slightly more like 'Christmas' with only trying to make the most of the remaining 'working' days that remain in December. http://www.abc.net.au/technology/articles/2011/12/09/3387365.htm There is now 'breathing space' to consider the key aspect of providing telecommunications services beyond 2013 - and of course that is what part the NBNCo will play in future business and residential services and depends on whether or not there still be a sort of Labor government beyond the next election?....which of course is impossible to predict. Looking at the 'roll out' plans from NBNCo, nothing much will happen over 2012 in terms of new service delivery and even in 2013 not much extra 'coverage' will be provided. In residential terms this makes absolutely no difference to what Exetel, or most other ISPs, will provide in terms of percentages of NBNCo services versus Telstra/their own DSLAM services. The issue now is - is it possible to put some sort of small business strategy in place in those areas where there is NBNCo coverage? We will spend some time over the balance of December and then most of Why business rather than residential? Because, really, at this time the 'need' for 100mbps fibre is simply not required by more than a handful of residential users (and that is wildly exaggerating the demand) and as there is no cost saving from replacing an ADSL service with fibre what demand there will be will be in places where no ADSL is available - and those are the most expensive markets to service - for all the obvious reasons. Business users in those areas will be a far more sensible 'market' to address because of their very different needs and the requirement to provide a real set of 'add on' services such as business telephone, fax, SMS, hardware and - above everything else - real support beyond a 'connection up' level. Assuming the NBNCo continues beyond the next federal election (and it is pretty difficult to run a 'wait and see' strategy for two years) then any telecommunications company has to have a sensible strategy to address a change from ADSL to fibre and that is not going to be based on providing residential services in the same nightmare scenario that now exists in supplying residential ADSL services - what sane person would ever contemplate doing that? So there is now some six weeks to try and work out, assuming it's possible, just what will happen if the Telstra monopoly is actually going to be replaced with another federal government monopoly and, if that is the case, what should a company of Exetel's size do in that scenario? I wouldn't want to pre-judge the results of some sensible thinking but I would be surprised if it involved providing residential services. Copyright © Exetel Pty Ltd 2011 Friday, December 9. 2011Dog Day Weeks Will Now Replace Dog Day Afternoons......John Linton .....for the next month or so. We have one day to go to complete our revisions to this years business plan for the remaining six months of this financial year in terms of figures and targets and can then put the 'documentation' in place notifying the various people concerned about the changes that will effect them. It has been a different process this time and, from my viewpoint, much more frustrating as it has involved more people who, by definition, haven't had the 'starting point knowledge' to have made any sensible contributions and have slowed the overall processes resulting in a great deal of 'frustration'. We had two major decisions to make in terms of 2012 and have been unable to make either of them - one because we have not managed to get enough information from a third party and the other because we have not been brave enough to fnalise the decision. These are small matters in the general 'sweep' of business but they are very large to us - or more particularly to me personally. However, we will make the last minor changes to the overall objectives of Exetel in a series of meetings today and then move back to making as much as we can happen in these, dying, days of 2011 and seeing just what we managed to accomplish over the past twelve months which has seen so many changes in the telecommunications industry in Australia and particularly for our part of it. One of the things that I have noticed has changed the most is the attitudes of almost all the main suppliers of residential ADSL and voice telephony services to both the markets and the services that are offered to the different markets. I struggle to find the right words to describe this change - the closest I can get is 'a progressive lessening of interest'. Perhaps Telstra's relentless 'win back campaigns' and therefore the reactions of every other ADSL supplier to the residential market campaigns reduced profitability from ADSL so much that even the wealthiest of providers ended up not caring as much as they had in the past. Possibly more surprising than the changes in attitude, from the suppliers view point, has been the virtual abandonment of many suppliers in their pursuit of major profits from wire line telephone call charge profits.....not Telstra of course (though that also lessened over the year) but the offers of first VoIP and now massive reductions in PSTN charges ($10.00 a month retail for 'unlimited' local, national and calls to Optus mobiles from Optus is a stand out change of emphasis) - I guess that just indicates that VoIP has finally become the de facto cost standard for telephone calls and these newish PSTN prices are the belated reaction to the ongoing loss of telephone call revenue by the carriers (Telstra). Mind you the profits on wire line calls are still gigantic - at least for the carriers: http://www.smh.com.au/business/fees-ruling-puts-a-smile-on-telstras-dial-20111208-1olau.html Another noticeable change over the past year or so has been the abandonment of 'naked' ADSL by all but the very silly elements of the marketing/buying sections of the industry. A few years ago 'naked' ADSL (always a particularly stupid appellation) became trendy as really dumb people thought that they were somehow "not paying money to Telstra for a worthless PSTN line" by buying a 'naked' ADSL service. Of course, all they were doing was spending more money to cripple the necessary PSTN line that delivers the ADSL service and make it more difficult to change suppliers. They saved nothing but the suppliers were happy to do it because it made it harder for the customer to 'churn away' from them. One of the crazier marketing nonsenses I have ever seen - but then the buyer decisions made in the ADSL marketplaces are as crazy as those in any other set of marketplaces I suppose. So, we will have the Exetel Christmas party this evening which marks the 'formal' end to another year with only the final 'tallying up' to be done over the coming days - it's almost 2012. Copyright © Exetel Pty Ltd 2011
Thursday, December 8. 2011Self Regulation - It Would Be A Farce........John Linton .....if it wasn't such a ridiculous concept that it moved beyond farce a long time ago. The TIO has always been a commercial tragedy - dreamed up by Telstra to serve its own interests (it was much cheaper than fixing its own support and provisioning problems) and blindly followed by Optus which meant that, between the two of them, they accounted for 95% of the complaints about telephone wire driven services. It was much cheaper for Telstra to pretend to 'self regulate' than fix its appallingly bad customer service problems and the TIO was, from the start, staffed by moronic dross from the unemployment queues whose knowledge of the simplicities, let alone the complexities, of the telephony industry could have been written on the back of half a bus ticket. So you read articles such as this: http://www.smh.com.au/business/telcos-should-hang-up-on-selfregulation-plan-accc-20111207-1oj6l.html and despair about the nannyism that has become so prevalent in Australian society, especially over the past four years. The key areas of problems mentioned in the article are, of course, not self regulated and never have been - "New standards for advertising, pricing information and spend-management tools". ACMA does all that 'litigation' based on their own lack of understanding of what telecommunications is all about and the labyrinthine ways of displaying such data that Telstra, closely followed by Optus have put in place over the past 20 years which has been slavishly copied by the vast majority of their wholesalers and then other very small 'independent' telecommunication providers. Does any of this need to be 'regulated' in the first place? Personally I can't see any reason at all.....unless Australian society is aiming at an East German Sovietisation of governmental control over every aspect of societal interaction.....and before you jump down my throat for expressing such an exaggerated view.....tell me what improvement ACMA has actually delivered over its existence and then tell me what it has cost the tax payer over that time? You can't do that can you?....and neither can I because the figures are impossible to find and people like you and me just accept that all governments are wasteful of our money and they all create sheltered workshops on the Federal payroll to provide the unemployable with somewhere to spend the days they want to go into the office to use the internet and telephone for their personal purposes. If a company (like Telstra) falsely advertises then 'self regulation' is not going to stop them doing that and ACMA, on its record to date, is not going to do anything effective either - what will happen is that people (with half a brain) will see the lies for what they are and not buy the products or services and the people (without half a brain) will be conned and not notice because they are stupid and that's what happens to the stupid in very aspect of life. If the government nannies want to protect the stupid from the inevitable results of their stupidities perhaps they should close all the betting shops and pubs so that these dummies won't spend their dole money on picking losing horses or station police at every hotel bar to stop the stupid from tipping too much alcohol down their throats. Perhaps the same nannies should raise the age of 'marriage' to 35 to stop the stupidities that arise when people without a skerrick of commonsense pledge their undying love to each other at 18 and then screw their own, any everyone around them, lives in to chaos? You get the point - where does nannyism actually stop once you try and protect the terminally stupid from the results of their own decisions? If any federal government really wanted to 'protect the Australian public from nasty commercial exploitation the would ban tobacco and alcohol and close all race courses and casinos. But no - why not 'regulate' the telecommunications industry - that's a really pernicious bunch of financial rapists and looters. I have a better idea. Abolish the War Department (it isn't a Department of Defence - we haven't had to defend anything since 1944 but we sure have made war on a lot of people who we never knew and posed no threat of any kind to us since then) thereby returning $1,500 in taxes every year to every human being in Australia and then progressively close all the money spending for no discernible result federal sinecures, such as ACMA, to return a further $1,500 to every human being in Australia. Then cut Federal politicians by 75%, abolish State government entirely and invest all this money in education, German and Japanese manufacturers to ensure that the population is well educated and can easily afford Mercedes, Porsches and Flat Screen TVs now that they have stopped pissing their money away on booze, gambling and smoking (we would also need 75% less hospitals and health care 'professionals' as a side bonus). Makes much more sense than telecommunications self regulation. Copyright © Exetel Pty Ltd 2011 PS: http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/politics/labor-now-practises-what-greens-preach-20111207-1oj3m.html Wednesday, December 7. 2011'Tis The Season To Be ......John Linton .....very frustrated and looking for alternative employment. There is little 'joy' to be had from being involved in providing residential ADSL services but over the past few years there is even less 'joy' than usual. It's true that providing residential ADSL services provides a constant challenge and that, over the years, you develop a very interesting and enjoyable relationship with a percentage of your 'customers' whom you get to know by their given names via correspondence and other means. Some of your customers become friends despite the fact that a relationship may begin under far from friendly circumstances. The problem with any wholesale business is that, no matter how hard you try - at the 'end of the day' - your performance is often constrained by circumstances (and suppliers) that are completely beyond your ability to control. This, for instance, is the sort of letter I am seeing increasingly being sent to customers: Dear Sir, Thank you for sending the ticket reference number of this issue which helped me investigate it. I have checked on this and to what the support engineer informed you on 5th November, the reason why you're experiencing slows speeds is because there are some network congestion issues at the exchange which is affecting most customers connected to that exchange. The support engineer has informed you that issue would be fixed by 30th of November, relying on the estimation that was given to us by Telstra Wholesale. However we did request for an update today on this issue and it seems that it's going to take longer for it to be resolved. As you may understand this is beyond Exetel's control at this point but I could offer you the following options 1. We have checked on the availability of another supplier infrastructure by way of a pre-qualification check and it seems thatADSL 2 via AAPT infrastructure is currently available. This option is given to you on a special basis, as these AAPT plans by normal procedure are not available to any of the other Exetel customers on Telstra plans. However we do not guarantee the activation of this service because we have to submit the application in order to check the technical availability of the plan. Also there is bound to be 2-48 hours of downtime provided the service can be provisioned at the location. All things going well, the transfer should take no longer than 6 working days. Also, because the Telstra plan is to be cancelled whilst on contract the early cancellation fee which otherwise should apply will not be charged to you in this instance. Further we will not charge you for the plan change fee but there will be a new 12 month contract that would be initiated which is beyond our control because wholesale suppliers impose it as a minimum term. The plans available for this option are one of the plans here- : http://www.exetel.com.au/a_plan_pricing_aapt.php If you wish to go ahead with this option, please let me know and the plan that you'd like to go on, I will have this arranged for you. 2. Regrettably, if we are not able to comply with option 1, or if you do not wish to change plans, you could churn away to a different provider who better suits your needs and we will not impose the $100.00 early cancellation fee on you. I sincerely apologize for the inconvenience, however I will personally assist you in having this issue completely resolved to the extent that we can. Kind Regards This situation ends up with a lost, and totally pissed off, customer and it makes Exetel look uncaring and incompetent. The carrier couldn't care less that they have caused this unhappiness and will never do anything about it. The wholesaler is judged, quite rightly, to be at fault and all of the people within the wholesaler, from the first engineer who took the call, through his/her supervisor and then on up the 'chain of command' till it reaches the very top of the company, are made to feel helpless and frustrated. Everyone loses, except the carrier, who caused the problem by their own greed and incompetence in the first place. I would like another set of responsibilities whereby, if there is a problem, I can play a part in fixing it. Copyright © Exetel Pty Ltd 2011 Tuesday, December 6. 2011Death By A Thousand Cuts........John Linton
Looking at the various aspects of business in Australia, and particularly those relating to the telecommunications business, produces a sense of unreality that hasn't been evident to me for as long as I can remember. I was too young back in brief days of the Whitlam government to be affected by the destruction of business that mindless socialism can wreak together with its destruction of a country's economy. The Hawke/Keating period was less damaging because it was ameliorated by an equal amount of totally non-socialist economic reforms that were identical to those that would have been pursued by a non-socialist government. However the sheer stupidities of the Rudd egoticities and now the promulgations of the Green dominated illegitimate Ms Faustus lead non government are becoming quite concerning. Personally I couldn't care less about "the mining tax" (sounds sensible but will almost certainly be ballsed up in the execution) nor do I have an opinion one way or another on "global warming initiatives" (Nothing Australia does will make the slightest difference to whatever is currently happening). I assume all governments make major errors which are quickly forgotten about when the real facts intrude upon fanciful posturing (the education revolution, pink batts for every Australian home scheme, grocery watch, petrol watch - the list is endless) and in any case the waste of money such posturings cost pale into insignificance compared to ludicrous military expenditures (12 submarines, multi-billion dollar aircraft spring to mind) and non-action on all the other key things Australian governments of any political persuasion indulge in (water for an arid continent, an education system that might educate someone). But the two most recent things that have 'surfaced' are indications of how this particular bunch of wankers is proposing to make business ever more difficult. If you haven't read about the proposed "bullying in the workplace" legislation then I won't bore you with the details because I would assume that they would produce the same level of sheer incredulity in you as they did in me. I had no idea that anyone who was not locked up in a padded cell could have dreamed up that an employer could be deemed responsible for the individual acts of their employees to the extent of facing huge fines or jail time if some employee claimed that they were being bullied in an incredible range of ways by either other employees or by the employer who could be deemed as bullying by doing something like asking an employee to carry out some task that was "inappropriate to their educational or commercial qualifications". Have these people never gone to primary school? Even I can't believe that the current bunch of twinkies in Canberra can consider inflicting this type of insanity on Australian employers: ....socialism gone totally insane. Then there was Whine Swan's dummy spit on introducing a currency exchange tax on "overseas payments" two days ago whereby he proposes to introduce a new tax on all foreign currency purchase transactions. While obviously a 'winged' "policy" that he hasn't given more than a billionth of a second thought to (other than to see himself as the total tosser that he is). What a good idea to tax Australian business that buys capital goods that are essential to run their Australian businesses from overseas manufacturers who require payment in $US or Euros or Yen etc. Is he going to tax the banks on their vast 'overseas' borrowings paid in $US? Is he going to tax airline ticket payments on 'foreign' airlines? How is taxing foreign currency transactions in Australian's interests?....except to a government that has pissed away tax receipts on social adventurism and now needs "to return the budget to surplus". Clearly a 'federal treasurer' who lacks the fiscal knowledge and discipline to manage the office 'tea money tin'. I could go on but I fear for my physical health which after so many years of working long hours is no longer likely to support making a living. Copyright © Exetel Pty Ltd 2011 Monday, December 5. 2011Mobile Telephony - Still A Bewidering BusinessJohn Linton I seldom take any interest in communications developments on the sub continent as they usually simply mirror the developments of their international owners but I read this earlier this morning: because we have been looking at what, if anything, Exetel should do with mobile telephony offerings in early 2012. While Sri Lanka is by no means similar to India in telecommunications technologies I have noticed on my dozen or so visits to Colombo that mobile telephone tariffs are amazingly low - much lower than those in Australia and far lower than can be accounted for by the lower personnel costs of doing business in Sri Lanka than in Australia. As you will see if you scan read this article one of India's major mobile suppliers (part owned by Singapore Telecom) suffered a massive drop in profit over the past three months and had to raise its tariffs by 20% while saying more raises are to come. At a US cent a minute for most call types it is hard to see just how any sort of profit can be made at all but they do. Both Telstra and Optus constantly report both subscriber growth and profit growth from their mobile telephone operations in Australia which seems quite an extraordinary achievement until you look at this company's results. I have never understood the mobile telephony business in Australia as the 'capped plan' scenarios endemic to that industry have always revolted me - being the simple minded person that I am and the never ending pursuit of customer numbers via ever greater discounting is not something I have ever understood....entirely my limitation. So, the article caught my eye in passing and as we are looking at a new 'deal' from Optus in terms of mobile wholesale pricing it was worthwhile considering what was happening to another Singapore Telecom company albeit in a completely different set of market places. If a Singapore Telecom partly owned company in India can make a sensible, albeit reduced, profit in India at tariffs of one cent a minute what sort of profits are they making in Australia at tariffs more than ten or twenty times that? Obviously quite considerable ones......even allowing for the handset 'give aways' and huge wholesale commissions and the massive advertising bills. Not that affects Exetel in any way - we are a tiny supplier of mobile services and always will be. What it does seem to confirm is that we do not have any ability to provide mobile telephone services - even for 'completeness' sake and we never have had although we have been doing it for almost as long as we have been in existence. So, despite its apparent irrelevance to anything happening in Australia, the article did underline why Exetel should have nothing to do with mobile telephony services in the future as it can never become part of a sensible 'offering' and we can never compete (in terms of a sensibly competitive service) with large suppliers - either carriers or wholesalers. We simply will never have the volumes that allow us to do that. Strange source of information that will influence such a decision after so many years. Copyright © Exetel Pty Ltd 2011 Sunday, December 4. 2011Money, Like Democracy And The Media.....John Linton .....not as useful as they might once have been. We have a week to complete the planning for the remainder of this financial year but we made little/no progress over the past seven days. In fact because of the involvement of other people this year we are falling further behind because of the need to wait endlessly for people new to the process to actually grasp that they have to do real work rather than present thoughtless and meaningless 'ideas' that have zero cogency and less research. Worse is their tendency to criticise well thought out concepts and plans based on their own non-research and therefore failure to understand that future plans can't be based on 'the past' except in the most general senses. It was always going to be this way as Exetel's needs for more involvement from more people if the future of the company, small as it is, was to be entrusted to more of its employees which is a necessary path to be taken if Exetel is to continue to develop. Sadly that brave initiative is going to take longer than initially estimated. Which highlights the problem that companies of the awkward size of Exetel always confront if they wish to grow beyond the bounds of their founders ideas, and possibly more importantly, ideals. I mention ideals, not in any philosophical concept but as a hard core reality that if a commercial entity has objectives other than making as much money as possible then attempting to transfer planning, let alone management, to people who only ever worked for money adds a difficulty that 'normal' companies do not encounter. I hadn't fully realised this particular difficulty until very recently and having thought about it I am coming to the conclusion that it is going to be a real problem.To find people competent to run a growing business in difficult times is never going to be easy. To find people who are prepared to sacrifice at least some of their personal financial ambitions to participate in a company that doesn't put financial achievement very high on its 'priority list' looks like being impossible - and quite rightly. So the issue becomes how to accommodate these diametrically opposed views? The simplest solution is to abandon the ideals on which the company was 'founded' to accommodate the desires of the people who now comprise the vast majority of the company - and that may well prove to be a way forward....at least for all but a handful of the longer serving people who believe that commercial entities have more responsibilities than simply making as much money as possible....laudable though that ambition may be in simple terms. The problem this issue raises, in the event that it is a problem at all, is purely for a very few Exetel employees. However those few are very, very important people as they are at the very core of having built Exetel from the beginning and remain essential to the operation of the company today. For the first time it is necessary to consider whether the 2012 Exetel will be a company that they are happy to continue to work with anything like dedication they have delivered, day after day, over the past seven plus years. What would Exetel do if they decided not to do that? Any ten cent personnel management text book will provide simplistic, and totally vacuous, advice on this sort of issue so maybe I need to invest ten cents and solve my problem. I think it is a far more seriously fundamental issue.....I somehow doubt it has a 'ten cent' answer. Copyright © Exetel Pty Ltd 2011 Saturday, December 3. 2011While I Understand That God Is Infallible.......John Linton ......Wise Beyond Wisdom, Ineffable and Omnipotent I sometimes wonder whether she really knew what she was doing when she invented democracy - unless it was as a cruel and enduring punishment for the human species. I understand that it might have worked for some of the more logical species like whales, emperor penguins, termites and elephants but how could she ever have expected it to work for humans? Especially after the Garden Of Eden incident which have must have clearly demonstrated to her that, no matter how well off humans are, they will always and immediately do something terminally stupid for no other reason than they have no ability to consider the consequences of their actions if they think they can get away with it. The stupidity that: "Democracy may not be perfect; but it is better than all of the previous alternatives" which is variously ascribed to a lot of people who should have known better (including Churchill) is self evidently just plain wrong. Starting with the Athenians in the 6th century BCE whom God first blessed with this craziness more people have been enslaved (one way or another) or died in prosecuting either civil or external wars than any other form of 'government'. All forms of 'democracy' involve the subjugation of the many to the few who then proceed to pillage the territories inflicted with this pernicious form of 'government' and as many other territories that they are able to be reached until they are deposed by the many who reach a point where they feel able to do something about it. Democracy, being based on the pre-eminent gross stupidity that all people can have an 'equal say' in how themselves and their territories can be governed tries to ignore the base tenets of humanity (as epitomised in motherhood, families and all education processes for the first 16 plus years of a human's life) that NO human can even feed themselves, dress themselves or carry out any other action required to keep themselves alive, healthy and able to learn anything useful unless they are specifically, and repeatedly instructed how and when to do so. Has anyone ever seen an example of humanity that crawled out of the womb and was able to manage any aspect of their life without precise and constant instruction for the best part of two decades? Why then, if this previous statement is correct would God think that these helpless individuals are capable of making any sort of decision let alone decisions that result in selecting people to 'govern' their future actions and opportunities? It makes absolutely no sense at all. Or look at it another way. No one expects to hire an accountant that hasn't spent some years at university learning accounting. No-one expects to hire an airline pilot who hasn't been trained to fly small aircraft then gradually progressing to larger aircraft (always under the instruction of an experienced pilot ready to instantly correct the many errors of judgment made in the process of learning) before entrusting the lives of passengers to their care and attention....and so on and so on for an infinite number of examples. But 'governing' a whole population? No problem - just put that in the hands of a bunch of self serving wastrels selected by a bunch of people with absolutely no idea of any aspect of the process with even less idea of the capabilities of the people seeking election...and never questioning why these election seekers would be giving up their well paid careers to take on a job that would not pay them anything like what they currently earn? Or worse; elect someone who has never actually succeeded in anything at all so far in their life to whom an MP's remuneration would be a step up! There are so many incredible stupidities that comprise "democracy" that you have to wonder what Edenesque transgression modern humanity has committed to make God so pissed off with us to inflict her concept on so many nations around the globe. Roll on the Oligarchic revolution.One final, and most obvious condemnation of democracy - if it's so good as a method of selecting a government why doesn't it get used in any other aspect of human society? Does anyone suggest the military forces of all current 'democracies' are democratic? The civil service? The police? Any corporate entity? Universities? Schools? Sporting teams? Hmmmmmm? Let me finish by quoting the late WSC: "The best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter" (I prefer that to the quote of his that I used near the beginning) Copyright © Exetel Pty Ltd 2011
Friday, December 2. 2011Might As Well Check Chicken Entrails......John Linton .....for all the knowledge and understanding the High Court will bring to understanding copyright theft.....at least it would produce a quick decision with no enormous costs. I read through this earlier this morning: http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/other/HCATrans/2011/323.html not because I have any interest in any possible ruling next year but because I wanted to get some idea as to whether the AFACT advocates would be able to rescue the dog's breakfast of the case they tried to run originally (it appears they couldn't from what I read). It would be extremely difficult, even for a far more able advocate than AFACT have selected, to try and explain the complex intricacies of how people steal property via BitTorrent to completely computer illiterate senior citizens and clearly it is beyond the selected advocate's abilities based on this transcript. Once again the sheer inanity of the line of 'argument' pursued beggars the imagination. It is surprising, to me, that the law makers in this country haven't worked out decades ago that the system of asking non-competent persons in their retirement years to rule on topics, subjects and incidents of which they can have no conceivable knowledge is truly ridiculous way of shaping a country's laws and observances. There has to be a better way of controlling Australia's lawless elements whether they be a larcenous teenager stealing movies or a corporate mega crook stealing billions - or even a dumbest of governments infringing human rights. Three thousand years of emulating the 'village elder' tradition of summary rulings must be seen to be obviously inadequate by now? ......and that is all the Australian High Court is....a bunch of politically appointed 'mates' approaching senility getting one last opportunity of getting their snout in the trough before the men/women in white coats finally wheel them away. So, some time in 2012 a bunch of senile senior citizens will rule on a dog's breakfast set of contentions. Then what happens? At best nothing at all - because, despite the separation of powers or whatever cliche justifies the enormous expense of the High Court no one involved in making whatever ruling is made will understand anything more about the issue than when the whole fiasco began. The French parliament legislated on this issue and, irrespective of how you view either the French, their assembly or their views on democracy that is the only way any 'progress' will be made. I drive on the right hand side of the road because I am told to - no-one is interested in my views on my rights to drive anywhere else - it's the 'law' and anyone with contrary views is going to get in a whole heap of trouble. I can't walk in to a bank and help myself to the teller's cash draw because I think the bank charges too much interest (it's against the law) nor can I drive a new car away from a dealership because I think Porsche charges too much for a 911 (its against the law). The 'copyright infringement' nonsense can only be resolved by Federal legislation and, as interventionist as the current High Court members may be viewed - they can't enact legislation - so whatever 'ruling' they make cannot progress anything. So, apart from the morons, the current nonsense occurring in Canberra has no meaning for anyone at all other than the lawyers who will be paid enormous sums of money to reveal how incredibly unknowledgeable they are on a simple subject which they will never be able to grasp let alone elucidate for the retirement home residents they will be talking to. Copyright © Exetel Pty Ltd 2011 |
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