John Linton ........so far - so good.
It was really good to go return to work at the North Sydney office yesterday after a three week break - I had forgotten what a very nice group of people comprise Exetel and how their smiling and enthusiastic faces and attitudes are such a very positive ambiance to be around in a working day. It was also really good to see that, via a quick 'get me up to date' review with various managers that a great deal of progress had been made while I had been away and that the new financial year has got off to a really positive start. Maybe my day to day presence isn't required by Exetel any more and I can take more holidays in the future?
We have a few things to do concerning the ADSL services we offer as the current desperation by so many ADSL providers becomes more and more evident and there is nothing like an absence from a 'project' to give you a much clearer perspective about all sorts of things. So we went through the analysis of the 8192/384 plans offered to the residential marketplaces in detail and (on the assumption that the Telstra 'plan' to correct the issues with their exchanges has been completed) have re-instated the 'old' 8mbps plans with some enhancements to, hopefully, provide the best offerings available in that category. We will do the same with the 1.5 mbps ADSL1 plans this morning/later today and hopefully be able to achieve the same results.
We have, over the past year or so, often been asked to provide Telstra ADSL2 services because of the much greater coverage and have, from time to time, enquired about doing this with Telstra - but always receiving the same response - that they are not prepared to do this unless we did it exclusively which is completely out of the question for Exetel. Apart from Telstra's much higher price for ADSL2 than the prices we pay to either Optus or AAPT we obviously have supply contract terms with both those companies that even if we were prepared to sever relationships with suppliers who have been, over the past 6 plus years, much 'kinder' to Exetel than Telstra ever have (by the proverbial country mile) our current contracts would not allow that to happen.
I suppose it was looking at the 8 mbps pricing again that jogged us into re-considering Telstra ADSL2 because the cost, to Exetel, of Telstra ADSL2 is not much more expensive than the cost of ADSL1/8mbps though I haven't seen any up to date pricing so I may be wrong in that assumption. We will find out what the current situation is over the next few days and make a decision once the facts are known but Telstra's attitudes would need to have changed from those of the past to make any progress on this issue possible. I am not holding my breath.
There will not be time to look at the ADSL2 plans until next week as we will use the balance of the time available this week to 're-jig' the wireless broadband offerings. We now have more substantial data to look at and it will be an interesting re-examination as we haven't looked at what is actually being used by our own customers for almost four months and a lot changes in that time. It's also time to re-examine just what can be done in terms of add on hard ware and services - again something that we haven't looked at for far too long.
So...it seems I have been away for too long in one sense.....so much to look at after a three week absence....but then things are 'travelling' very well so perhaps nothing should be changed in the immediate future?
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