John Linton November is generally a good month for Exetel and this November followed that 'pattern' with record revenue and positive 'pointers' in many of our market places. After three incredibly difficult years it is nice to get the feeling that, perhaps, the worst is behind us and we can now relax, if only a little, from the massive grind that trying to operate a business of our size in increasingly difficult times has imposed on us - or at least on Exetel's senior management. I am far too old to be either an optimist or a pessimist in terms of looking at the future but, for the first time in a very long time, I see more than 'bleakness' in the early months of the new calendar year. Perhaps there will be a chance to do something 'creative' and exciting in the new calendar year instead of taking the endless 'defensive' decisions we have been forced to take for more than three years now. I may not be very good at a vast array of things but I am definitely at my very worst when I am involved in 'defensive' operations.
We put in place a new low end ADSL2 plan yesterday (a 5gb peak/5gb off peak plan for $4.50 plus $20.00 for a PSTN line) which is the lowest 'real' ADSL2 offering available for those more than 50% end users who download only a few gigabytes of data a month. While these new plans (complementing the previously announced 10gb peak/10 gb off peak for $9.50 per month) will not 'excite' heavy down loaders they do address the majority of users of our residential ADSL services - and, I assume, the majority of users of most other ISPs - with the possible exception of TPG. We will also put in place similar low cost ADSL2 plans for business users over the next 48 hours and begin an escalating program of selling to the SME market places via several new initiatives on the basis of attempting to duplicate the success we have enjoyed in the corporate market places over the past three years.
Our major 'concerns' in moving in to the last six months of this financial year are all to do with how we continue to improve, and improve at a faster rate, our progress in addressing the corporate market places we have had continuing success with over the past three years. During that time we have put many of the required processes in place to allow more progress to be made but we have still got a very long way to go to begin to achieve what we should be able to. As we finalise the 'figures' for the start of 2012 it is more and more obvious that we need to do many things differently to the ways we do them today and that is a challenge that I am not sure can be accomplished as simply as I had previously hoped. If that proves to be the case, and we have to spend more time 'preparing' for the 'great leap forward' then I am not entirely convinced that I can put in another year of 'the same'.....three years of 'the same' has sapped my resolution and certainly long exhausted my reserves of 'forgiveness' - old age is a tyrannical master.
December is always a difficult month because of the actual public holidays, the de facto public holidays between Christmas Eve and New Year's Eve and the fact that a large percentage of Australians take annual holidays beginning in the second week of December. These issues always present challenges to trying to maintain 'momentum' in all sorts of aspects of business life and make all sorts of different demands on 'planning' and operational staff. Our current outlook is very positive for the month and, with a bit of luck, will propel us into the dog days of the first two weeks of January with some sort of momentum that has been lacking over the past three Januaries. The first day of December signals the true end of this calendar year which I, for one, will be glad to see reach its end. It remains as important as ever, perhaps more important than ever, to use these days to fully plan and do the preliminary real work that will ensure we have the very best chances of making the last six months of this financial year as productive as possible - starting from 1/1/2012 - not some much later date.
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