Monday, September 21. 2009Fatalities And FatalismJohn Linton
After that re-introduction to the realities of Sri Lankan road travel we had an uneventful flight back to Bangkok and spent the afternoon looking at sapphires and rubies which, because of the International gem stone fair just finishing were at even greater bargain prices than usual - made even better still due to the appreciation of the $A exchange rate against the Baht since we were here a year ago. It always surprises me that gem stones in Bangkok are between one fifth and one tenth what they are in Australia. On the relatively short flight between Colombo and Bangkok I did some work on new ADSL2 plans that we are considering for October or, at the latest, November 1st. As it's 35 degrees at the moment I had no inclination to leave the hotel after participating in the afternoon shopping trip and left Annette to her own devices while I played around with some new numbers. Steve has got some new pricing from a number of our suppliers and we will be able to form a much better opinion this coming Thursday and Friday. I understand that I have been away for over three weeks now and have become very relaxed (comparatively) as you tend to during a sensible length vacation but it seems to me that there are indications that the overall reductions in IP pricing and the general reductions in support and other key operating costs can result in both lower end user prices and significantly different delivery models to the ones that have been in place for the best part of the whole time ADSL hs been made available to Australian users. Whether I understand the various different ADSL buyer profiles is another matter altogether and I am pretty sure I don't. Having acknowledged that ignorance it still seems to me that for Telstra et alia to have remained fixated on providing base ADSL services with very low included data allowances the reality of the ACTUAL ADSL market is that a very large proportion of current users don't actually download very much at all - and that has been their custom for many years now - month after month. If that is the case then it re-enforces my belief that it is an exploitable opportunity as I commented on a few days ago. Depending on what Steve has negotiated, and I haven't discussed it with him since I have been away, it should be looking like a cost of slightly sub 30 cents per customer gigabyte delivered during peak and around half that in off peak. An ADSL2 'line' (ULL) costs Exetel slightly less than $A20.00 (inc gst) and the associated telephone line costs a little less....in some particular cases it can be as much as $5.00 (inc gst) less. If these prices are correct than it seems a sensible thing to do would be to simply offer PAYU plans at a base cost for the ADSL service plus a base cost for the telephone service (if required) and then simply charge for data downloaded at a rate of $A0.50 peak and $A0.25 off peak - or something like that. I haven't looked at what other ISPs are doing in terms of passing on the benefits of the raft of cost reductions that are becoming more and more apparent over the past few months (all I have seen is the move by AAPT to offer unlimited off peak downloads on which I've previously commented) and we would obviously need to do that before making any decisions but it all looks very interesting. I think something(s) are long overdue to happen in the Australian ADSL market as the 'meee tooooism' has reached a crescendo and if the ABS figures do continue to show that the ADSL market has peaked and may well start to exhibit negative growth then there will have to be some fairly significant changes. It will be interesting to see who is the first to 'break ranks' and offer a no BS plan that simply expects the user to pay for what they use at the lowest possible per gb rate possible with no 'smoke and mirrors'. Sounds simple - but as with "mobile cap plans" the buying public may not want to actually have simple facts to base their buying decisions on. Trackbacks
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50c per peak gigabyte!
I don't know what to say - this exceeds my expectations of a PAYU plan completely. If you can obtain said pricing and release a plan similar to the aforementioned - Exetel will clearly be the lowest price ADSL2+ provider in Australia - Well done! Comment (1)
Those plans sound fantastic!
Can you negitiate cheaper caller-id on the optus home phone line? $3/month seems a bit exorbitant in this day and age for such a simple function.... Comment (1)
Thomas, as you know the mobile companies focus on 'head line' cap prices and try and make money on everything else - hence "add ons" are priced very high.
Having said that we will add it to the list of re-negotiations. Comments (2)
If you have a "list of renegotiations", then something I'd ask for is for some attention to mobile international roaming for voice and data.
Roaming is notoriously expensive, I know, and I know that Exetel advice I have seen on the forums is, summarising, "you'd be silly to roam - put a local SIM card in" but this is not always so simple, especially when multiple countries are involved as in moving around Europe. People do travel overseas, and, if there is any room to get better roaming rates on voice or data or both, that would help. For example, at present I believe that the Exetel Vodafone-based plans provide roaming at Vodafone World tarifs + 10%, and the Vodafone Traveller or the UK scheme called something like "Vodafone Like Home" (or am I thinking of Three Like Home" ?) - anyway, add-ons which give cheaper roaming - are not available through Exetel as far as I can see. The current plans looks almost as if Exetel has traded off more expensive roaming for customers to get cheaper Australian rates. Only you would know the trade-offs in these negotations. But, bottom line, if it didn't cost anything in terms of giving up value in non-roaming, then getting better value for overseas roaming would be appreciated by those who have to do it. Thanks Comment (1)
Exetel has it's own Global roaming rates, found here:
http://exetel.com.au/res-mob-pricing-other.php We only take a very slim margin on these calls. However, I will bring it up at the next round of rate negotiations. The trade off assumption for cheap domestic rates is not correct. They are just very expensive at a wholesale level. Comment (1)
"Sounds simple - but as with "mobile cap plans" the buying public may not want to actually have simple facts to base their buying decisions on."
I think we can thank the big 3 telcos for this mentality (although Three were the first to use the scam... I mean pricing structure of caps). For so long it has been stupidly expensive for mobiles, landlines and ADSL. Get screwed for so long you think it's the norm, and when you see something like smaller companies, such as Exetel, offer, it sounds too good to be true. And if it sounds too good to be true it usually is. I was reading what other countries pay in regards to these areas, and in the US what we are forced to pay $90 for, is $15 over there. Comment (1)
I am about to relocate to another unit in my Brisbane CBD residential block.
I was disappointed to see I'd lose my current PAYU plan if I relocated now. So I am really keen to see these new PAYU plans come in .... soon! ..... then I can relocate and move onto one of those. An alternate is to just use my "backup" HSPA service as my main service.... ... if the black box became available.. H. Comment (1)
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