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.
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