John Linton
We visited another stone circle this morning - this one being much easier to find and very different to any other stone circle I have ever seen in that the stones were surrounded by a (now) six meter earth wall which would obviously have been much higher when it was built some 3 - 4,000 years ago. It had two 'opposing entrances in the wall East and West and a huge funeral 'barrow at the western side of the structure. It was set on the highest point of land within the immediate horizon though in those days the current farm land would probably have been mostly dense forest. After stopping off in Bakewell (for a Bakewell tart) which we ate by the river that runs through the town and again admiring what must be a contender for the prettiest market town in England we headed off to the high peaks.
The Peak District is simply stunningly beautiful and even the by-roads we mainly traveled on had been improved since our last visit. We had a wonderful few hours driving to the highest points we could find with road access stopping often to admire one magnificent view after another. The mixture of wild moor with tiny grey stoned villages and cultivated land presents a vista of harmony (humanity and the land) that has its own appeal versus magnificent views provided by 'unspoiled' mountains or deserts. I'm by no means a Gaian but I do derive a great sense of peace from being in places like this.
When we eventually ended up at our hotel we were tired out - although we hadn't done as much walking up and down hills as we usually do and I was not really in the mood to catch up on what was happening in Australia. However I read the usual media and responded to a couple of interesting emails. The Australian technology 'media' seems to remain dominated by the future of the 'NBN2' which I suppose is fair enough now there is something more concrete to talk about.....and I notice we have received our first applications for the NBN Tasmanian trial as well as the just released (by Exetel) fibre locations offered by Opticomm. Given that (assuming the HOG between Telstra and NBNCo turns into a mutually signed contract) the roll out of more fibre should proceed faster than is currently happening and the key area of interest is what 'sweet heart' deal on preferential pricing Telstra has obtained - clearly on the basis that it will be a 'special' consideration outside the main stream pricing constraints of the wholesale arrangements that will apply to everyone else.
It is none of my concern, being involved with a very small company on the periphery of these major issues, but I am curious as to how Telstra Retail manages to compete with Optus et alia when they have no intrinsic advantages and no way of 'controlling' the pricing available to their competitors. It isn't simply adjusting to a new price regime it is the completely new concept of having no advantages at all other than the marketing flim flam that can be made out of "experienced project management" and the other undoubted personnel skills they will continue to array. But what happens to their need to pay for all that personnel and management infrastructure and overhead? Sweet heart pricing can go a fair way to making that happen but how will Telstra deal with its massive overheads? It will be fascinating to see over the coming 12 - 18 months or so.
I am going to be more interested in seeing how the pfwyu fibre pricing Exetel has set up for the three fibre services that currently exist. At the moment the other ISPs who have offered fibre services have stayed with their ADSL pricing models which, I would have thought, were at the end of their usable life - 9 years is an awfully long time to be flogging that poor creature I would have thought....though the same in spades could be said for mobile hand sets (16 years) I suppose. I have been really happy with the sales results of the Telstra fibre trial where Exetel has 'picked up' something like 4% of the available total connections (with another 3.5% applying but being rejected). I realise that it is a very tiny sample (and the actual number of possible end users varies according to different Telstra pronouncements) but it is a 300% increase in Exetel's usual 'achievement' in market shares.
The Tasmanian trial will provide a more accurate assessment of how/if Exetel can compete in a future fibre/NBNCo controlled infrastructure and this information, together with the Opticomm results will give us a much better idea of how/if we can make a sensible contribution to future residential fibre users.
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